"Popular on Netflix" is a series of films that Neflix-ers are streaming. There next to offerings by Jason Statham (2011's Blitz) and Mark Walhberg (2007's The Shooter) is Jane Fonda's Barbarella.
Barbarella was a French comic strip that appeared in V-Magazine. The strip, created by Jean-Claude Forest, followed a female astronaut through various adventures throughout the galaxy. Roger Vadim would direct the film based on the comic strip starring his then-wife Jane. The film angered prudes and entertained film lovers (such as The New Yorker's Pauline Kael who found the film (and especially Jane) worthy of praise.
Over the summer, the film got a Blue-Ray release which really does justice to its visuals. (Roger Vadim was one of the masters of using colors to evoke moods and emotions.) This is not the version Netflix is streaming.
Jane has nothing to be embarrassed of, she's hilarious in the film and it's' a classic of the French New Wave. But Jane's also gone on to be nominated seven times for an Academy Award (she's won two Best Actress awards -- for Klute and Coming Home).
But does a young Netflix streamer know about that? Do they know The China Syndrome, for example? How about her amazing performance in The Morning After?
We ask that for a reason.
Films are a part of our American history. In the early days of television, the stations so chopped up films for commercial breaks, there was little point in watching. (A point made in Billy Wilder's The Apartment when Jack Lemmonn attempts to settled down for a night in.) Revivals at art house theaters and people like Pauline Kael and writer Peter Bogdanovich (later director of classics such as Paper Moon, The Last Picture Show and What's Up Doc?) helped correct these wrongs.
Then Jane Fonda led a home entertainment revolution when she moved the video cassette market from strictly rentals to purchasing for your home library. Since then, for the most part, the industry's done a good job promoting the past and keeping film history alive.
But everyone seems to be lagging with streaming.
It doesn't seem the same effort is going into promoting streaming when it comes to the classics, not the same effort that was there earlier with releasing them on video cassettes, laser discs, DVDs, etc. For example, on Netflix currently, 1963's The Caretakers is the only streamable in the Joan Crawford filmography. This iffy picture in which Crawford's third billed, is that really how to educate anyone as to what she could do or why Joan was able to have a decades long career? Still, Joan's got one more streamable film than Carole Lombard.
An actress many have longed to be or to emulate, one of the first female comedy stars of talking films, Lombard's classics include Twentieth Century with John Barrymore (Drew's grandfather), My Man Godfrey, To Be or Not To Be, Hands Across The Table, The Princess Comes Across, Nothing Sacred and True Confessions.
Or take Alan Ladd. You can stream him in the classic Shane but that's an 'idea' film. It didn't make him a star. It was the films This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key and The Blue Dahlia that made Alan Ladd one of the biggest actors of the 1940s.
Does any of it matter?
It matters in terms of both film history and our country's own history.
It matters in terms of dollars and cents as well.
People didn't care a great deal, for example, in the 60s about It's A Wonderful Life. It was only when it became a staple of television in the seventies that the tide began to change and it began to be considered a holiday classic. We can think of many holiday films that are actually better than It's A Wonderful Life (including Frank Capra's Meet John Doe starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck) but they didn't get mass saturation.
That kind of access to a film creates both memories and a bond that lives on.
Whether it's Netflix, Hulu or Crackle, the studios don't seem to grasp that currently and aren't using their product to enrich film history or themselves. They could easily do both. One of Alan Ladd's classics featured prominently online for streaming would result in people being aware of and interested in his other film noir roles. In other words, for the first time in many years, the studios are back to failing to create a market for their archives.
We're thrilled Jane Fonda's Barbarella is popular on Netflix. We think it's a film worth watching and that she's a real pleasure in it. We're also aware that she's done a lot more in other films. Access is what creates bonds and identification. We think the studios need to grasp that. To focus on Jane, studios would do well to grasp that she's only made one sci-fi film thus far and if you're wanting to build an audience for the films you retain the rights to that she stars in, you probably need to create a streaming model that both lures and showcases.