For movie lovers, there’s a darker side to Netflix ending DVD rentals
.....Once you get into the back catalogue of the studio era, the situation’s even more dire. A scalding little film noir such as “Act of Violence” (1948), directed by a newcomer named Fred Zinneman and starring an impossibly young Janet Leigh and a terrifying Robert Ryan, begs to be discovered by a new generation but will languish unwatched and forgotten. Even a bona fide Best Picture winner such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940) is nowhere to be legally found, although the inferior 2020 remake is right there on Netflix.
This is bad news not just for film culture but for cultural history. A movie that is no longer seen ceases to exist, and so does the society it reflects — its values, beliefs, meanings. As streaming video becomes the norm and DVD and Blu-ray shrink to an audience of connoisseurs, collectors, and Criterion junkies (guilty as charged), the past recedes to a curio, and our entertainment choices constrict to an endless and eternally profitable Now. Sure, you can find many otherwise unavailable titles on YouTube (including, for the time being, the 1940 “Rebecca”) — but mostly in bootleg prints that quickly get whack-a-moled into oblivion by corporate gatekeepers.
In a sense, this is a return to business as usual. We forget that for the bulk of film history, movies were junked after they completed their theatrical runs — it’s why an estimated half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90 percent made before 1929 are lost ........
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