Strange blind spots in movie years

My project to re-add all the movies I'd missed since 2022 into my big movie spreadsheet -- which is now finished! -- has brought me regularly in contact with the number of movies I've seen in each year. 

These totals are vastly weighted toward the last 12 years, the time I've been in Australia, when there have been two big differences from my previous life: 1) fewer social activities at night, a function of both exiting my former social context in Los Angeles, and just getting older; 2) no nighttime conflicts from watching sports.

The patterns are humorously predictable in many situations. For example, for any year that's already in the past since I've been in Australia, I've seen at least 182 films from that year, and the lowest on that list is, unsurprisingly, last year. There are a few years that spiked in the middle when I was watching extra movies for the human rights film festival whose program I used to help select, but the years unaffected by that are remarkably consistent in my viewing patterns, with between 182 and 200 films watched.

Maybe that one's not so surprising, but the consistency goes back to years when the randomness over time should have created more of a spray chart of viewings. But I have seen exactly 77 films from 1991 and 1992, and in the years 1985 and 1986, the number is 58 for both.

It should seem obvious that the farther you get back in years, the less likely I am to have seen many films from that year, and that logic holds to a point. But today I am writing about an exception. 

Let's look at the films of the 1950s. I'm underrepresented in these years generally, as I'd like to have watched more older films than I have. But what can I say, I've never been a classic film fetishist. I have a bias toward new releases, always have, and have still seen more classic films than your average person, just maybe not more than your average cinephile.

For example, I've seen 19 films released in 1955. That's pretty good actually. I'm fine with that number. There are some other decent totals in the 1950s, such as 17 in 1957 and 16 in 1953.

But you go just one year before that to 1952, and the number is six. 

Three months ago, that number was four.

Only four films from a year only 70 years ago? Out of nearly 7,000 films that I've seen? How can that be?

And yet until I watched Otto Preminger's Angel Face on February 4th, I had seen only The Greatest Show on Earth, High Noon, Kansas City Confidential and Singin' in the Rain. 

I watched The Greatest Show on Earth for my blog series to catch up with the remaining best picture winners I hadn't seen back in June of 2015, and Kansas City Confidential for another blog series, Audient Noir, in July of '21. So if you want to take this back even farther, ten years ago today, when I was already 41, I had seen only two movies released in 1952.

What does this mean?

Nothing. Just randomness.

The reason I'm writing about it today is that yesterday I got up to an even half-dozen from '52. I watched Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D. on Kanopy, only my third De Sica film despite my love for (what I will always refer to as) The Bicycle Thief. Although the other I've seen, Marriage Italian Style, is not very much like The Bicycle Thief, this one is clearly a spiritual successor. I won't go into all the comparisons because I'm about to go away for the weekend for a camping trip, and my brain is not in a particularly analytical mode at the moment. But let's just say you could rename both movies The Dignity Thief, as the title character here shares a lot in common with the protagonist of the earlier film. Both characters are trying desperately to stay afloat financially in post-war Italy, and both have to do things they're ashamed of to do so. If you wanted to be really reductive about it, both characters' efforts are disappointing another loyal character who loves them, though in this case it's a dog rather than a child. 

In case you were wondering if this is just the start of a steep viewing decline, that's not the case. We're back up to 10 in 1951, and then every year in the 1940s has between seven and 11 movies seen, with the exception of another anomaly: only four in 1943.

Is this all much ado about nothing? Possibly. After all, what's really the difference between six movies seen in 1952 and seven movies seen in 1947 and 1950? And why am I not writing this post about 1943 instead? 

Obviously, there is not much difference -- now. But two months ago, it was only four, and ten years ago, it was only two.

Maybe I should have written this post ten years ago.