This article reflects on the joys of accidental movie discoveries in the pre-streaming era, contrasting it with the curated selections offered by modern platforms. The author argues that the limitations of terrestrial television actually led to a richer viewing experience, fostering serendipity and exposing viewers to a wider range of films, both good and bad.
From Double Indemnity to Women in Love, the accidental viewing of masterpieces was one of the joys of the seasonLast month, I found myself with a few hours to spare on a rainy Saturday night in Antwerp, and only three movie options in the immediate vicinity:, which I did want to see, but it was subtitled in Dutch; and the 1988 anime Akira, in Japanese with English subtitles, which I had somehow missed all these years. This is my favourite sort of choice: Hobson’s choice, that is. Akira it was.
, the bail bondsman played by Robert Forster in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Asked what he is going to see at the multiplex that afternoon, he replies: “Something that starts soon and looks good.” For anyone who grew up on films prior to the streaming era, Max’s philosophy, and my Antwerp evening, may recall the days of watching movies on terrestrial television. In the UK, that meant appointment viewing, three channels (orThis might sound austere to anyone nursed on Netflix or reared on Roku. Remove near-infinite film choices, though, and you avoid the modern paralysis of abundance and indecision, the lost hours of wandering from platform to platform like a dazed tourist in a foreign station. You also bid farewell to the condescension inherent in streaming. There are thousands of options just a click away but we are mollycoddled by the algorithm, which suggests titles it knows we will favour. The risk of surprise or disappointment is kept to a minimum. Gone is the prospect of an accidental viewing of an unknown masterpiece, or the kind of abysmal artefact that is equally valuable in defining taste and sensibility. It would be hard to know what we liked, after all, if we never saw anything that we didn’t. TheTV schedules introduced me as a youngster to Psycho, To Have and Have Not and The Wizard of Oz, but it is the laborious musical western Paint Your Wagon that hogged whole afternoons during my childhoo
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