Starting June 1, Netflix is turning up the suspense with a curated collection of Alfred Hitchcock films, and while the streamer continues to push its at-home-first agenda, it’s also going big with a six-week theatrical celebration in New York City titled HITCH! The Original Cinema Influencer.
Let’s start with the streaming lineup. U.S. subscribers will get access to a batch of iconic Hitchcock titles including Vertigo, Rear Window, Frenzy, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Family Plot, and The Birds.
If you’re already in the mood, Psycho is currently available to stream. But Netflix isn’t stopping with the classics, they’re also throwing in films inspired by Hitchcock’s chilling legacy, such as Jordan Peele’s Us, Zach Cregger’s Barbarian, and the Anthony Hopkins-led biopic Hitchcock, directed by Sacha Gervasi.
If you’re in New York, though, the real treat might be at Netflix’s own Paris Theater. From May 16 to June 29, the company is co-presenting a massive retrospective with the New York Film Critics Circle.
The series will screen more than 50 films, including 36 directed by Hitchcock himself, with 35 of them shown in glorious 35mm. Highlights include Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, as well as Hitchcock-influenced works like François Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique.
The Paris Theater is a historic, single-screen cinema that opened in 1948 and it was saved by Netflix in 2019 after it nearly became a Walgreens. Now, it serves as Netflix’s hub for exclusive engagements, premieres, and retrospectives.
As the company puts it, the Paris “is the home for exclusive theatrical engagements, premieres, special events, retrospectives and filmmaker appearances.”
Of course, this move comes with a bit of irony. Speaking at the Time100 Summit just last week, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos addressed the company’s position on theaters. He said the “communal experience” of the movie-theater business is “an outmoded idea,” arguing that for most Americans, “you can’t walk to a multiplex and see a movie.”
But he clarified the company’s theatrical strategy by adding, “We didn’t save it to save the theater business. We saved it to save the theater experience.”
So while Netflix isn’t here to revive the box office, they are reminding us that watching a Hitchcock thriller in a dark theater with a crowd is an experience worth preserving.
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