Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story – another frequent pick for Greatest Film of All Time – also turns up on the late Steve Jobs’s baby without bothering Google.īut if you’re looking for pre-1960s material in a language other than English you are better off moving towards a specialist subscription service like the British Film Institute Player or the excellent “curated” selection at MUBI (about which more in this space shortly).Īpple and Google are, however, excellent options for American cinema of the greatest era. Apple does offer an excellent selection of Akira Kurosawa’s post-war work to rent: Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo feel like the pick of the bunch. Neither site is, alas, at full speed on “foreign language” films. You can get The Greatest Film of All Time (see a million polls) on both Apple and Google Play. You may need to jiggle a little to get them on your biggest screen, but those two sources offer an array that would cause any 1990s VHS retailer to swell with pride. Yet largely unheralded by buffs, an excellent array of vintage cinema has landed on rental services such as Apple and Google Play.

Amazon Prime does a little better, but the focus is still on new movies and newer TV series.

You’ll struggle to find much of worth there made before 1970. The gaping hole in that service’s catalogue remains films made before 1960.

They may even have had a decent video store that provided a selection of classic films in languages other than English. Mind you, they would have had the option of an older film – something from Hollywood’s golden age, perhaps – on afternoon telly. Self-isolationists of yore could not turn to Netflix or Amazon Prime for diversion. For reasons that shouldn’t need to be reiterated, audiences are paying greater attention than ever to the entertainment options on streaming services.

Classic films