There is a scene of Sorry I’m late which, at least in the opinion of he writes, is one of the funniest moments in the filmography of Massimo Troisi: it is when the protagonist of the film, Vincenzo (Troisi), is in bed with his girlfriend Anna (Giuliana De Sio) on a lazy Sunday afternoon in the house stolen from the Professor upstairs. Vincenzo and Anna argue, but at a certain point on the radio we hear Cesena’s goal at San Paolo, against Napoli. A comment escapes him, she gets annoyed. Vincenzo asks her what the problem is and Anna, annoyed, replies: “There is that Napoli are losing against Cesena “. And Vincenzo, brilliant: “But it’s only the first half, it could even be that he draws”.
Sorry I’m late is a film released in 1982 and was a success at the time: he collected more than 3 billion lire. Well, if by chance the description of the first scene and this information made you want to see it again or to see it for the first time, there would be nothing to do. Because? Because the film is one of the big absentees from all streaming platforms in our country.
Streaming tv
There are hundreds of hidden movies on Netflix, and there is a trick to finding them
by Emanuele Capone
The big excluded: La dolce vita, A small little bourgeois, Memento
From Netflix to Disney Plus, up to Amazon Prime, TimVision, Infinity: the streaming landscape is getting wider and wider. However, there are some movies, even very famous ones, which are literally impossible to find online. An issue that should not be underestimated if we consider that in Italy in 2021, according to the Ott Executive Video Services Observatory of Ey, there are over 13 million subscriptions to services that allow you to watch films and TV series on demand. AND according to the 2021 Univideo Reportlast year digital overtook physical product for the first time in terms of turnover: streaming represents 51% of the total market.
Don’t be on streaming platforms, in other words, it dangerously resembles not existing. And the titles that are not available online in our country are many, some even extremely famous. We have selected 10 great absentees (to date and according to the JustWatch archive) which we miss most.
- Sorry I’m lateby Massimo Troisi
- The Name of The roseby Jean-Jacques Annaud
- The sweet lifeby Federico Fellini
- A little petty bourgeoisby Mario Monicelli
- The killer’s kissby Stanley Kubrick
- Grindhouse – Proof of deathby Quentin Tarantino
- Theirby Paolo Sorrentino
- Mementodi Christopher Nolan
- The ignorant fairiesby Ferzan Ozpetek
- The little devilby Roberto Benigni
But for what reason such famous and well-liked films are out from streaming platforms?
Copyright: the battle for missing films
The simplest (and perhaps trivial) answer is related to who owns the rights to the content. Netflix explains it well, in its help sectionin which he highlights how streaming platforms work “with content providers, distributors, producers and authors to acquire the necessary licenses for streaming reproduction”.
A content may not be available, therefore, if for example those rights are assigned exclusively to others. This is the case with a film called The heartbreaker (The heartbreak kidin English) which, as an article in The Guardian tells, it is not available on any platform because a pharmaceutical company, Bristol Myers Squibb, owns the rights and has no plans to sell them.
For this reason, there is an organization that brings together actors, directors and professionals in the sector called Missing Movies, whose goal is precisely to recover these lost films, to ensure the preservation of the entire catalog of the history of cinema: “There is an immediate need for manage this problem – reads the organisation’s manifesto, available online – The truth is that movies are less accessible today than they were in the days of VHS, when stores had tens of thousands of titles available. Now, with a small group of huge companies controlling the market and fighting a battle of original content, many older films are left behind ”.
TV series
3 reasons to watch Halt and Catch Fire (even if you won’t be able to watch it)
by Emanuele Capone
The choices of platforms and the role of data
Here, the choices of the platforms. This is the other big reason why some movies are hard to find online. To understand why it can be useful to take a step back. One of the great innovations of streaming it’s not just on-demand and the ease of finding titles anytime, without leaving home. It is also, for those who manage the services, the possibility of analyzing a constant flow of data, which concerns people’s vision activities: when watching a movie and when choosing series, how longfrom which device, what content you look at in one go and which one leaves there to finish who knows when.
This massive flow of data drives most of the decisions streaming platforms make. According to an article by Lucas Shaw in Bloomberg, for exampleNetflix groups a lot of this data into one metric, which helps a lot to explain why so many old movies aren’t streaming.
The data is called AVS and it’s the number of views parameterized on the user’s value: Netflix considers a view that comes from someone who is just signed up or, alternatively, who frequents the platform very little, of greater weight. This is because the company’s goal is to grow subscribers and, at the same time, increase viewing times.
E what is the content that drives people to subscribe? Or to watch a series after a break? Probably the new ones, the big productions, the ones that as soon as they come out go viral on social networks. And not old films, long gone and probably already seen. But in this way they risk being lost.