On a rainy Saturday night in Antwerp last month, I had a few hours to spare and only three movie options in my immediate vicinity. I also wanted to see the rap comedy “Knee Cap,” which is partially in Irish, but it had Dutch subtitles. And although the 1988 anime “AKIRA” had Japanese and English subtitles, I somehow missed it for many years. This is my favorite choice. In other words, Hobson’s choice. Akira was right.
This experience reminded me of Max Cherry, the bail bondsman played by Robert Foster in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. When I asked him what he was going to see at the multiplex that afternoon, he replied: “It’s coming up soon, and it looks good.” If you grew up watching movies before the streaming era, Max’s Philosophy and My Night in Antwerp may remind you of the days when you watched movies on terrestrial television. No. In the UK, that meant scheduled viewing, three channels (four from 1982) and no catch-up features. The time, the tide, the TV schedule waited for no one.
This may sound harsh to those raised on Netflix or Roku. But by stripping away the near-infinite selection of movies, we avoid the paralysis of modern affluence and indecision, and the wasted time wandering from platform to platform like stunned tourists at a foreign train station. You can also say goodbye to the condescension inherent in streaming. Thousands of options appear with just a click, but we’re spoiled by algorithms that suggest titles they know we’ll like. The risk of surprises or disappointments is minimized.
Gone is the possibility of accidentally seeing an unknown masterpiece or a profound piece of art of a kind that is equally valuable in defining taste and sensibility. After all, it’s hard to know what you like unless you see something you don’t like. As a young child, I was introduced to “Psycho,” “To Have and Have Not,” and “The Wizard of Oz” on Christmas TV shows, and these stories occupied every afternoon of my childhood. It was a laborious musical western called “Paint Your Wagon.” Experiencing that suffering shaped me into the person I am today. In other words, I’ve become a person who can tell the difference between a good Clint Eastwood movie and a bad one.
Two weeks of inactivity without streaming provided an ideal environment for film education
During the holidays, every yawning moment was filled with movies I might not have otherwise seen or thought to seek out. During the Christmas holidays of 1982, when I was 11 years old, I wondered how I would have watched the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and 40s and fallen in love with the loincloth protagonist Johnny Weissmuller if the BBC hadn’t shown these movies every day. On a December morning in 1984, Channel 4 broadcast the 1941 meta masterpiece Never Give a Sucker An Even If it hadn’t been for the lively screening of “Break,” I might never have met this giant of American comedy. To paraphrase the cliché, it was all WC field. This was around here when I was a kid.
Now flipping through a faded copy of the Radio Times or Television Times is like reading a movie theater schedule for a different repertoire. Sholai, the 1975 Indian epic that celebrated Amitabh Bachchan’s superstar status, was featured in Channel 4’s first-ever Christmas Day schedule in 1982, alongside The Navigator (Buster Keaton) and The Opera House. It was sandwiched between “Night of the Night” (Marx Brothers). ITV aired Vertigo at midnight. On Christmas Eve 1987, James Stewart climbs the terrifying chimney tower just as Santa Claus descends. It may sound far-fetched, but Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s profound historical drama Effie Briest arrived on ITV one night in mid-December. Fassbinder appears on ITV! It’s like finding Michael Haneke on TikTok.
While the fledgling Channel 4 was showing classics on a nightly basis (Stalker, Mon Oncle, Double Indemnity), the BBC was showing vintage Peter Sellers seasons and Burden of the Dead. It was a mix of “Dreams” (about the making of Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo”) and Ken Russell’s “Women in Love”. Today, older, more artistic movies tend to fall into disrepair, being pushed aside by blockbusters and cheaper Hallmark-style Christmas movies. Only hardy perennials such as It’s a Wonderful Life, The Great Escape, and The Italian Job still exist regularly.
All glasses tended to be rose-colored, as just days after Christmas 1987 ITV’s prime-time slot was replaced by the retrograde farce No Sex Please, We Brits, starring Ronnie Corbett. Don’t miss it. But the combination of a small number of channels, a diverse back catalog of films, and an audience willing to sit through two weeks of inactivity without relying on streaming created an ideal environment for film education. Part of the magic was that the viewer was not involved in the choice, just choosing from several options. Antwerp, that is. Just like Jackie Brown.
The ship sailed so long ago that it cannot even be seen as a dot on the horizon. And it would be churlish to underestimate the wealth of options available on platforms like Mubi, BFI Player, and the Criterion Channel, which is filled with work far beyond the mostly white male filmmakers mentioned above. But it is not diversity, but a tendency toward diversity, that has changed the temperature of our views. When Mubi launched in 2007, there were only 30 movies available at a time, with new titles being added every day and others disappearing into thin air. Currently, we offer a catalog of several hundred items. I’m sure I’m not the only subscriber who uses the new model much less frequently and often considers quitting it altogether.
Looking back on the modern moviegoing environment in 2019, Carol director Todd Haynes told me that what he missed was “being shown one movie at a time and enjoying the serendipity of just being shown. You weren’t.” If you choose that, you won’t have to sit there and think, “What should I watch?” You feel a deeper connection to things when they are not completely controlled by your whims. And I think, oddly enough, it changes desire. Once everything is available at once, we don’t need it anymore. ”
Read more
The Great Movies by Roger Ebert (Broadway Books, £50)
Hollywood: Oral History by Janine Basinger and Sam Wasson (Faber & Faber, £25)
Christmas in the Movies: 35 Classics to Celebrate the Season by Jeremy Arnold (Running Press Adult, £20)
