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Steven Spielberg, Freshman Year
One of the exciting things about seeing movies over an extended period of time is seeing the growth of a genuine artist. Despite reservations about his early output, it was obvious from the outset that Steven Allen Spielberg was a dynamic story-teller and a wizard in communicating with a camera. His training manuals were the classics of the film-makers of spectacle—the David Lean's and Alfred Hitchcock's and Cecil B. DeMille's, the guys who made expansive roadshows that appealed to a mass audience. They made movies of exotic places and large personalities that could fill a Cinemascope expanse with adventure and color and grandeur. They could also manipulate an audience with their technique to fill them with awe and wonder, or propel them out of their seats in an explosion of popcorn. Movies were a thrill-ride, but with better scenery. From the beginning, Spielberg had that impresario spirit to look at an audience as a territory to be conquered: give them bread and circuses and chases. Tell them a story and give them a thrill. Very quickly, he became his own brand: "A Spielberg Film" was something to see.
Duel (1971) Precocious with movie cameras and making his own home-movie features at an early age while growing up in an Arizona suburb, Steven Spielberg also had enough chutzpah once he was of age, to sneak onto the Universal lot and abscond his own office, Then with hard work and mentoring, he got to direct his first television feature--a segment of the "Night Gallery" pilot starring the formidable Joan Crawford. It was the stuff of industry legend. But folks really stood up and took notice with this "ABC Movie of the Week" adaptation of Richard Matheson's bare-bones short story: a man in a car against...something... in an 18-wheeler, out in the desert. In a TV environment where budgets ruled all, Spielberg managed to give his minimalist film a movie feel, with elegant travelling shots, charging effects techniques, and, in moments calling for panic, almost-hallucinatory extreme close-ups. But there's more to it than technique. Spielberg also gives the demon-truck the supernatural quality it deserves, creating a seemingly unstoppable foe. He provides a rousing climax, then ends with a melancholy, existential coda, elevating the car-versus-truck story. He also had the benefit of an all-stops-out performance by the underutilized Dennis Weaver.
The Sugarland Express (1974) With all that was to come after, folks forget that Spielberg's first theatrical feature film was this Goldie Hawn...er, "vehicle," featuring a long, slow car chase, an unsympathetic lead (even if her intentions are good) and a down-beat ending. Critics took notice, but nobody bought tickets, an occurrence that wouldn't happen again for awhile. Goldie plays a mom who springs her husband (William Atherton) out of prison, takes a guard hostage (Michael Sacks) and leads a convoy of patrol cars (led by Ben Johnson) on a quixotic trip to rescue her child from a foster home. Spielberg wouldn't attempt this level of crowd-no-pleaser 'til later in his career. The script is by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, both of whom would be taken under Spielberg's wing and figure in several more projects with Spielberg's name attached. The director also populated his cast with a fair percentage of locals with no previous acting experience for color, a technique he'd also employ in his next "little" film.
Jaws (1975) You'll find an early analysis here. There's not much to add, other than, with time and close inspection, the seams show a bit more in this roller-coaster crowd-teaser about an "eating machine" picking off citizens of a Massachusetts beach community during high-tourist season. The movie's bi-polar: On land, it's a Hitchcockian tease, but on open water, it's a bit like Duel--frenetically hyper-busy with bits of business and one crisis after another. But what could the kid do? He had a shark movie, but for 95% of filming he had no shark. Water and weather conditions changed from moment to moment, but John Williams' insistent score keeps you focused on the action. And he's helped immeasurably by an odd, brilliantly picked cast. Spielberg's lead was a character actor usually given sinister second-banana roles, and for the other denizens of the good ship Orca, chose two character actors who, in style and personality, were oil and water: the classically trained Welsh boozer/playwright Robert Shaw, and the pinched, hectoring Actor's Studio product Richard Dreyfuss. With a cast like this, the shark's almost superfluous for generating drama. Spielberg changed the book considerably and provided a "wowser" of a finish (in the book, the shark just...dies) that, over the original author's objections,* pays off mightily. Over-time and over-budget, it became the first wide-opening Hollywood blockbuster, setting the stage for how films were presented, marketed and hyped for the next 30 years.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Flush with the success of Jaws and his name now a household word, Spielberg parlayed his clout to make a dream project that star Richard Dreyfuss announced on "The Mike Douglas Show" "will turn Columbia Pictures into a parking lot" if it wasn't a success. Based on a bit of one of his childhood 8mm movies, partially on a commissioned script by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), the evolving storyline started out as a film about a pesky alien attack, and turned into one about obsession, dissolution and ecstatic epiphany. "Everyman" contractor Roy Neary is touched by a light from beyond and the scorch-marks it leaves on his face dig deep into his brain leading to a compulsive scavenger hunt-like search for the answers. He's joined by other adrift souls (including a mother searching for her alien-abducted toddler) and, Job-like, is rewarded for his trials...and his faith.** Released the same year as Star Wars and uncompleted to Spielberg's satisfaction at the time, it can now be seen as he intended (and without the unnecessary scenes inside the Mother-ship that bankrolled Spielberg's tinkering). The completed film shows Spielberg's willingness to broach dark material before making his way to the light at the end of the tunnel. It also shows his growing directorial skills with kids (as was briefly displayed in "Jaws") not only in the performance of the pre-verbal Cary Guffey, but also in the heart-breaking performances of the actors who portrayed the Neary children.
1941 (1979) After the Jaws/CE3K one-two-punch, Spielberg set his view-finder on a screwball/slapstick comedy--ala It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World--the basis of which was a John Milius/Robert Zemeckis/Bob Gale script about California attack hysteria in the days following Pearl Harbor. What was a relatively clever, modest script ballooned into an elaborate loud-mouthed farce with a star-studded cast headed by a coke-addled John Belushi and the likes of John Candy, Dan Ackroyd (of course), Slim Pickens, Warren Oates, and even Christopher Lee and Toshiro Mifune (playing it straight). 1941 is barnacle-encrusted with in- and out-house jokes, starting with the same skinny-dipping gal from the beginning of "Jaws" being hoisted into the air on the periscope of a surfacing Japanese submarine. It's all "Jerry Lewis"-subtle and the wanton destruction on several fronts is considerable and wearying and ultimately signifying...not much. But it could have been even more extreme: John Wayne was too miffed at what he considered the anti-Americanism in the script to play General Stilwell (Robert Stack stepped in), and the lookouts on the Ferris Wheel were originally to be "Honeymooners" Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (but became Murray Hamilton and...Eddie Deezen). 1941 bombed at the box-office and all the blame went to Spielberg for running over-budget and overboard. Hollywood dismissed him as an irresponsible flame-out. But he had friends in high places.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) On a post-Star Wars vacation in Hawaii, George Lucas and Spielberg made plans for a series of films based on the old movie adventure serials, but amped up with modern story-telling techniques and special effects centered around a globe-trotting archaeologist named Indiana Jones (Tom Selleck was the front-runner to play him, but as he was tied up playing "Magnum, P.I." on TV, Harrison Ford slipped on the ever-present fedora).*** Based on a story by Lucas and Phillip Kaufman, Spielberg protégé Larry Kasdan fashioned a taut, wise script winking at the genre and poking fun at the clichés while playing up the mysticism. With the overview of Lucas, Spielberg, for once, kept tight rein on the production and came in on time and under budget, allowing him to retrieve his industry cred—helped, no doubt, by the healthy receipts of a cracker-jack film. Spielberg's career was revitalized, and more importantly, his work with Lucas inspired him to form his own business model for film-making. he would stop being a studio work-for-hire and, within a year, would start directing and developing film projects under his own production masthead, named for one of his student films...Amblin Entertainment.
* "Jaws" author Peter Benchley hated the movie's end, finding it unbelievable and embarrassingly "cowboy." Showing the film to a group of marine biologists, he was mortified to watch them cheer hysterically when the shark blows up.
** James Lipton, when he interviewed Spielberg on "Inside the Actor's Studio" asked Spielberg the professions of his divorced parents. He was an inventor specializing in computers. She was a music teacher. Lipton then asked him if it had occurred to him that that was why a computerized synthesizer (that learned the language) was used to communicate with the aliens. "It just occurred to me now.." was Spielberg's flustered reply.
***How it came up was Spielberg confessed to Lucas that he wanted to direct a James Bond film, to which Lucas replied, "I've got something better than Bond." Naturally, when it came time to cast the father of Indiana Jones, the first person they asked was original movie Bond, Sean Connery.
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Steven Spielberg, Sophomore Year
One of the exciting things about seeing movies over an extended period of time is seeing the growth of a genuine artist. Despite reservations about his early output, it was obvious from the outset that Steven Allen Spielberg was a dynamic story-teller and a wizard in communicating with a camera. His training manuals were the classics of the film-makers of spectacle—the David Leans and Alfred Hitchcock's and Cecil B. DeMille's, the guys who made expansive roadshows that appealed to a mass audience. They made movies of exotic places and large personalities that could fill a Cinemascope expanse with adventure and color and grandeur. They could also manipulate an audience with their technique to fill them with awe and wonder, or propel them out of their seats in an explosion of popcorn. Movies were a thrill-ride, but with better scenery. From the beginning, Spielberg had that impresario spirit to look at an audience as a territory to be conquered: give them bread and circuses and chases. Tell them a story and give them a thrill. Very quickly, he became his own brand: "A Spielberg Film" was something to see.
At this stage of his career, after the high promise of Jaws and the lessons learned from the excesses and poor box-office performance of 1941, the lean and mean adventures of Indiana Jones for Lucasfilm emboldened Spielberg to form his own production company, Amblin Entertainment.
E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Having directed the most crowd-pleasing film for the Summer of 1981, Spielberg began developing stories he had ideas for, but not the time or inclination to devote all of his energies to. One was his "haunted-house-in-the suburbs" romp, which became Poltergeist. Spielberg produced, but gave the directing reins to Texas Chainsaw Massacre auteur Tobe Hooper. A variation on the theme--Gremlins, written by Chris Columbus--was dispatched to Roger Corman alum Joe Dante. An anthology film based on Rod Serling's Twilight Zone was on the horizon. But for himself, Spielberg developed a more personal, kid-friendly version of CE3K--E.T., The Extra-Terrestial. A variation on CE3K's "little boy lost" theme, ET focused on a lost parasitic alien who gloms onto the middle child of a dysfunctional family, and teaches the kid about self-sacrifice and unselfishness...by, presumably, letting go of the link that was leeching the life out of the boy and sacrificing himself. This makes ET the most obvious Christ allegory since Klaatu made the Earth stand still. And, yes, ET is also a sci-fi variation of Lassie. With so many traces of classics running through it, how could it miss having its glowing finger on the pulse of just about everybody in America? ET quickly became Spielberg's second record-smashing blockbuster, trumping Lucas' Star Wars (which had, in turn, swamped Spielberg's Jaws) for the #1 ticket-generating film of all time. One could become cynical about the mega-success of the film, but it does generate strong emotions, tug at the heart-strings and earns its sustained farewell scene with a pay-off where ET parrots significant dialogue back to his adopted family. ET remained the "most popular film of all time" until it was sunk by James Cameron's Titanic 20 years later (a record Camron overtook with Avatar).
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) One can't mention TZ-The Movie, without acknowledging the lethal elephant in the room, that being the helicopter crash on-set that killed actor Vic Morrow and the two Vietnamese children he was carrying in his arms. The accident on director John Landis' watch cast a pall over the entire enterprise. There were other segments--Spielberg's, and one each by George Miller and Joe Dante. Spielberg's seemed a natural--an adaptation of George Clayton Johnson's "Kick the Can," a sentimental tale of a group of old folks who lose themselves in a childhood game and return to their youth, literally. Richard Matheson's expansion spends more time with the kids (the least interesting part, really), but as Spielberg was becoming known as a "kids' director" (a title he would grow tired of later), one would think it was playing to his strengths. But, the "Kick the Can" segment is mawkish, and curdlingly sentimental. It wears out its welcome (and its sense of wonder) very fast, leaving a definite change in quality going from the inferior Landis-Spielberg segments into the riskier and better-fulfilled Dante-Miller segments.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) Things start out promising--with a rollicking parody of Busby Berkeley musicals with the appropriate sentiment of "Anything Goes" to a free-wheeling romp as Indy tries to recover a diamond and the antidote to a poison he's been fed while an all-singing/all-dancing running battle erupts in a crowded nightclub (called the "Club Obi-Wan"). Unfortunately, that "Anything Goes" promise extends to just about every aspect of this lumbering, elephantine production. Far darker and violent than Raiders (because of it, the MPAA created the more mature PG-13 rating), it's a mean-spirited, gratuitous exercise with kids beating up on each other, Indiana being beaten with wood-beams and torches, the villain reaching into the chest of a sacrificial victim and tearing out his heart (before the guy is lowered into a lava-pit and burned alive! Alive? He just had his heart torn out!), and a ludicrous race through a mine-shaft that feels like a spastic E-ticket at Disneyland (if the stop-motion puppetry weren't so apparent). Add to this, Indiana (while under the spell of villain Mola Ram) turning into a really evil guy, and any sympathetic audience member has his loyalties severely tested. Also testing are the antics of Kate Capshaw as the high-strung, high-pitched heroine and the by-now-inevitable "cute-kid" named "Short Round" who you sincerely wish Jones will drop off at the next orphanage. An unpleasant experience all the way around. "Anything Goes," indeed. So sorry I went.
Amazing Stories (1985-1987): "Ghost Train"/"The Mission" Amblin's first foray into television was an anthology series (great!), featuring high-end budgets (terrific!) and direction by veterans (Eastwood, Zemeckis, Dante) and talented newcomers (Mick Garris, Phil Joanou, Brad Bird) (awesome!) on some of the thinnest threads of stories that could be stretched out to half-an-hour (...meh!). The "Amazing Stories" always looked good, but 90% of them were dramatically inert, offering few surprises and overstaying their welcome by at least ten minutes. The premiere episode directed by Spielberg, "Ghost Train," based on a Spielberg story (a lot of them were half-baked Spielberg kernels of an idea, although one was turned into the feature length ...batteries not included) was one such example. But damn, if "The Mission" didn't hold your attention and keep you white-knuckled until its far-fetched, disappointing ending. One of the few hour-long stories, "The Mission" is a clever nail-biter about a bomber crew trying to return home with their landing gear inoperable and the lower belly-gunner trapped in his perspex bubble. There's no way the commander (Kevin Costner right before he went big with The Untouchables) can land without crushing and killing their gunner who has become their "lucky charm." The characters are well-drawn, Spielberg keeps the tension white-hot, and its only the ending that's a cheat. Up until the last minute, "The Mission" is one of Spielberg's best achievements in directing.
The Color Purple (1985) When choosing a director who could be counted on to adapt the story of an abused black woman finding her identity and worth after a life-time of having it supressed, Steven Spielberg is not the first choice to come to mind. No space-aliens! No sharks! No cute kids! (In fact, the kids are the meanest little scamps outside a Peckinpah film!) And part of the problem with The Color Purple is Spielberg's earnest attempt to turn its rustic story of simple gifts and the struggle for simple dignity into Gone with the Wind. The approach leads to some raw, unflinching emotions and scenes of grandeur (particularly the way Spielberg weaves the scenes of Celie reading her sister's long-suppressed letters from Africa, with her imaginings of what that far-away country must be, interweaving and warping the continuity of those scenes), but it has the tendency to top-load things with unecessary theatricality. You end up watching the spectacle without feeling the emotions that are trying to be conveyed. One can't help but suspect it was Spielberg reaching for an Oscar, which had eluded him with Jaws and CE3K. Still, Spielberg gets miraculous performances out of Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, and Margaret Avery. Eventually, Spielberg would find a way to get out of the way of the story....
Empire of the Sun (1987) ...But not just yet. Spielberg recruited Tom Stoppard to script this adaptation of J. G. Ballard's fictionalized rememberance of life in a Japanese prison camp during World War II, and the concepts are a bit more solidified than usual. Spielberg still goes for "The Big Moment" every reel or so, but when it comes to the emotional climax of the film (Jim reunited with his parents after the war), he mercifully underplays it and exploits it for irony. Its one of his best films in his early period, and he gets great performances out of a pre-teen Christian Bale and John Malkovich, from very early in his career. It may, at first glance, seem an odd choice for Spielberg to make, but one can see themes of dysfunction and the finding of hidden strengths that have cropped up consistently in his films, and many of the images he produces in this particular film haunt. He was starting to craft a better way of story-telling than consistently "going for the fences" with every sequence, and create a more mature, understated way to make films. That doesn't mean he wasn't still capable of something bombastic, however...
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989) The third Indiana Jones adventure further expanded the Jones universe. He was still fighting the Nazis later in the war, but Spielberg began his film with the adventures of young Indiana Jones (played by River Phoenix) in a sequence that establishes--probably too much--the trademarks of the elder Indy, right down to bull-whip, hat, and Harrison Ford's scar above the chin. And to further the process along, we're introduced to his father, Professor Henry Jones, Snr., biblical scholar and seeker of the Holy Grail. Connery doesn't quite get a handle on the elder Jones, the portrayal being inconsistent from scene to scene, but he does pull off the essentials--the pivotal scene where to distract "Junior" from grasping at the Grail that is jeopardizing his life (and has monopolized his own) he calls him "Indiana" for the first time, and implores him to "let it go." There are nifty little set-pieces throughout, with a particularly terrific sequence where, using Grail-lore, Henry Jones the younger must best several death-traps, culminating in a literal "leap of faith" to achieve his goals. Ultimately, the film is not nearly as satisfying as the first, but it's a great deal better than the second, so that's progress.***
Always (1989) On Spielberg's list of favorite films is one that sticks out like a sore thumb. There, among the films of Kubrick and Lean and Truffaut, is A Guy Named Joe, a sentimental WWII movie about a pilot who is killed and, having a rough time adjusting to the after-life, returns to look in on and meddle with the lives of those he's left behind. Eventually, he accepts his fate and leaves life to proceed without him. Maybe it has something to do with Spielberg's parents divorcing and his acceptance of it. But in making his own version, his screenwriters took it out of the war and into the realm of fire-fighters, where there is constant risk, but not constant death. For the Spencer Tracy role, Spielberg turned to his "alter ego," Richard Dreyfuss, along with Holly Hunter and John Goodman...and Audrey Hepburn in her last role, playing Heaven's Concierge. Where Tracy in the role could seem selfishly pig-headed, Dreyfuss comes across as selfishly pig-headed and creepily manipulative, leading those he loves to the brink of suicide. When last I looked at this film, I saw it as romantic fluff—and it is—but it is also Spielberg's anti-Vertigo: On Dorinda's (Hunter) birthday, Dreyfuss' character buys her "GIRL-clothes" (as she effusively warbles). In the male-dominated flight-world, Dreyfuss' Pete is the only one who doesn't see Dorinda as "just one of the boys" and, like James Stewart's "Scottie" Ferguson, he wants to turn the woman he loves into his heart’s desire, and so manipulates her into becoming what he wants to see. This gives the film added resonance after his death and manipulation of Dorinda (making it just as much her film as his), nearly driving her to suicide, but also showing her how to save her own life. When he turns his back on his former life (and former love), he allows her to be the person she is going to be—and lets her take the path of her life—without him. "That's my girl," is his final ironic line. Poignant, sad, and brave...and a better film than first thought upon a reconsideration.
Hook (1991) A "package" deal--all the major players shared the same agency--Hook is an elephantine film in desperate need of a light touch. And what should be a story with a sense of elation feels a bit juiced-up...like its been pumped with performance-enhancers, not unlike 1941. It feels claustrophobic, where the elaborate nature of, well, everything becomes wearying. Robin Williams wasn't too happy working on it. Julia Roberts wasn't. Dustin Hoffman appears to be enjoying himself, but he also appears to be playing to himself. And Spielberg, working on a complicated set-bound production found himself annoyed with the shenanigans of the kid-actors playing "Lost Boys." The "kid's director" had met his match. Or maybe he'd grown up just a little--a little ironic for this "Peter Pan Grows Up" tale. Or he was trying too hard to recapture something he'd already left behind.
Jurassic Park (1993) Here's the deal: Spielberg, after years of owning the rights to, and nurturing the script for Schindler's List finally bit the bullet and decided to direct it himself (he'd been trying to get Scorsese to make it). Universal, his studio of choice, wasn't convinced of the box office potential of a black-and-white movie about the holocaust (Go figure!), so they coerced Spielberg to first make Jurassic Park, which had far greater box office potential, in order to off-set the loss. One can quibble about how craven a movie Jurassic Park is -- like Hook isn't -- but one has to admire the pedigree and brio that Spielberg brought to the project. The casting is superb: Sam Neill, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Peck all bring spark to the cyphers of Michael Crichton's novel. And it's Spielberg in full "eating machine" mode. It's his most devilishly-intended thrill ride since Jaws. One particular scene stands out: Neil and the kids—there are kids, but they're good this time—have to scale an out-of-commission high-voltage electric fence, while elsewhere in the Park, Laura Dern is trying to restore power to the Island. Spielberg hangs on the sequence putting the boy in mortal danger of frying...and he stages it in an almost gleeful way (maybe it was those irritating "Lost Boys" from Hook...). The other thing about Jurassic Park is that it was aided immeasurably by Lucasfilm's post-production efforts to seamlessly integrate CGI dinosaurs into the frame. The results are spectacular, and changed the way movies have been made ever since. For some reason, Spielberg seems to be the master of integrating CGI and live-action than most directors...save for James Cameron.
Schindler's List (1993) While Lucas and Co. slaved away making pixilated dinosaurs, Spielberg was in Poland making Schindler's List. After years of toiling with the screenplay and casting, Spielberg was making his dream project...and he was miserable. The subject matter and the brutal way that he was presenting it...and the "ugly step-sister" reaction of Universal to it...deeply depressed him. Reportedly, he would call Robin Williams every night to make him laugh to get through it. Whatever it took, Schindler's List is a revelation. There are no camera tricks. No flashy set-ups. There is no romanticism. Schindler's List is bare-bones movie-making, and only once, where Schindler breaks down over the lives that might have been bought, does it become sentimental. It's the most un-Spielbergian Spielberg movie that he had directed to that time. He got uniformly terrific performances out of his cast, but particularly Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley and the best performance that Liam Neeson has ever displayed, probably because Schindler was a notorious performer. After years of reaching in subject matter to win Oscars, this one won him Best Director and Best Picture. Spielberg had arrived.
His pattern would now be to produce any number of ventures, take a couple years off, and then speed through two films a year. To do all that, he needed to expand his capabilities from merely heading a production company, like Amblin. He would have to become a studio. The one-two punch of the profitability of Jurassic Park and the prestige of Schindler's List would allow him to accomplish that.
The Sophomore Years (1971-1981)
*** But, not as good as the fourth would be. When I first did this retrospective, the news of the Return of the Great Adventure was a sad reprise of "The Last Crusade's" best line: "George, Steven, Harry...let it go." But, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a return to the series' roots, reflecting the times—and the movies of the times—in which it was set. Skull's setting was a nice congomerate of 50's B-movie material with commie paranoia, saucer-men, and far-fetched nuclear fall-out all playing hands, while moving on to a mature understanding of the world and one's life in it. (I wrote about that more in a further review called "Indiana Jones and the Terrible Age of Wonders.")
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Steven Spielberg, Junior Year
One of the exciting things about seeing movies over an extended period of time is seeing the growth of a genuine artist. Despite reservations about his early output, it was obvious from the outset that Steven Allen Spielberg was a dynamic story-teller and a wizard in communicating with a camera. His training manuals were the classics of the film-makers of spectacle—the David Lean's and Alfred Hitchcock's and Cecil B. DeMille's, the guys who made expansive roadshows that appealed to a mass audience. They made movies of exotic places and large personalities that could fill a Cinemascope expanse with adventure and color and grandeur. They could also manipulate an audience with their technique to fill them with awe and wonder, or propel them out of their seats in an explosion of popcorn. Movies were a thrill-ride, but with better scenery. From the beginning, Spielberg had that impresario spirit to look at an audience as a territory to be conquered: give them bread and circuses and chases. Tell them a story and give them a thrill. Very quickly, he became his own brand: "A Spielberg Film" was something to see.
Now, with the achievement of his personal goal of winning dual Oscars for Director and Picture (for Schindler's List), Spielberg could pursue projects following his interests with one eye on making money for his new production conglomerate Dreamworks SKG, and telling stories important to him...for whatever reason.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) After years of resisting efforts by studios to follow up one his blockbusters, Spielberg finally made a sequel to one of his movies. The Lost World would be the first. Partially, this was in gratitude to Universal Studios for allowing him to make Schindler's List. But there was another more selfish reason Spielberg wanted to do the follow-up-- he wanted to be the first one to have a CGI T-Rex rampaging through an American city. The Lost World is a wierd hybrid of sources, starting with the original book's opening. Then, it follows Crichton's follow-up book, then Spielberg went on his own tangent bringing the dinosaurs to the U.S. He's aided by a great cast: Jeff Goldblum returns, and is joined by Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite (his first of two movies for Spielberg), Arliss Howard and a pre-"West Wing" Richard Schiff. Only Vince Vaughn fails to register as a viable character. And...there's an annoying kid. Ultimately for all the technical advances, its a bit too much and unfocussed, except for a Rube Goldberg set-piece--taken directly from Crichton's book--involving three people in an articulated double RV, a precipitous cliff and two predatory T-Rex's stomping around outside. It's a giddy nail-biter. And if Spielberg had stuck to that tone, instead of playing around with the satiric possibilities of Rex's in America, it would have been a far better movie.
Amistad (1997) The story of the uprising aboard the slave-ship La Amistad had never been told before, but given Spielberg's clout post-Schindler's List, what was once considered box-office poison now had greenlight potential. As with The Color Purple, Spielberg's earnestness gets in the way of the story, which, if one merely gets the facts right, would make for compelling drama. Again, the cast assembled is amazing * Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Feeman, and as the white knight of the story, new star Mathew McConaughey--who despite tamping down his snarky Southern man exuberance still feels anachronistic for the period. And as the focus of the story, male-model Djimon Houssou acquits himself well--an impressive start for greater things to come. Now, if only they'd left John Quincey Adams' exemplary summation unscored by John Williams it wouldn't feel so much like a lecture, which, unfortunately extends to the entire film. After Amistad, Spielberg would take a year off before taking on his next subject..
Saving Private Ryan (1999) Spielberg's first film for his newly-created entertainment studio, Dreamworks SKG. Spielberg begins with a bravura set-piece--the landing at Normandy on D-Day presented quite unlike any way its been portrayed. Spielberg takes the subjective viewpoint to convey what it feels like to be a sitting duck as well as the arbitrariness of death in war. Folks quibble about the rest of the movie, but you can't deny the power of that sequence, visually and sonically.** A uniformly fine cast with Tom Hanks, Ed Burns, Vin Diesel, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Matt Damon, with cameos by Ted Danson, Dennis Farina and up-and-comers Nathan Fillion and Paul Giamatti.*** Hanks' portrayal of a "Joe" who just wants to go home and does whatever he has to towards that end is well-reasoned--you have to believe that Hanks could deliver the devastating last line that slams home the coda of the film. It's one of the few war films to deal with the trauma of survivor's guilt and the brick wall that lies between life in war and life in peace. Saving Private Ryan raised awareness of the soldier's lot in the "good" war, and dispelled the notion that any war could be "good" for those on the line. For that alone, it should be regarded as one of the greatest of war films. After Ryan, Spielberg would take another year-break from directing.
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) The Kubrick-Spielberg love-child that nobody loved. Kubrick called it his "Pinocchio" movie, and quite rightly decided after years of development to hand it to Spielberg, which, after Kubrick's death, he was only too eager to complete. But in the transition from Kubrick outline to Spielberg screenplay there's a lot of gear-grinding going from cold fantasy to sentimentality. And unfortunately it suffers a fate that too many sci-fi movies suffer—it asks us to absorb too many concepts too fast, and the casual movie-goer has a hard time accepting global warming, robot love, and an ice-aged Earth inhabited by your PC's descendants. Throw in a Blue Fairy and a dying robot's last wish and the audience is in stitches. But...it dares to ask that question rarely asked (except by Hitchcock in Vertigo) "What is love, really?" And the answer is..."Love is what audiences didn't feel about this movie." Still, there's some definite mind-stretching going on here. And it gave Jude Law a star-making turn, at last. Plus, the kid is simply amazing. Spielberg would take another year off, and come back in 2003 with two new films.
Minority Report (2003) Spielberg teams up with Tom Cruise on one of Philip K. Dick's high-concept sci-fi novels and manages to make a far more plausible future, but a less moody one, than that imagined in Ridley Scott's Dick adaptation, Blade Runner. Spielberg went the Kubrick route and hired future conceptualists (rather than art directors) to imagine the Washington D.C. of the future, full of mag-lev cars, targeted advertising via retinal scan, policemen with jet-packs and pre-cognitives who direct the police to the scene of the crime before it occurs. Spielberg casts a noir pall over the whole scenario which succeeds in nullifying some of his star's more intense moments. Colin Farrell impresses in an edgy performance that bests Cruise in their one scene together. The story is not much. But the trappings of it make it worth seeing. Spielberg evens pulls off a sequence that Hitchcock wanted to do: a fugitive makes his get-away by rushing into an auto assembly line and has the car built around him to escape.
Catch Me if You Can (2003) Spielberg, with a considerably lighter touch, tells the story of Frank Abignale Jr., who, shattered and adrift from his parents' divorce, gravitates to the edge of society and becomes an expert forger and jack of all professions. Leonardo DeCaprio is a hoot as a kid who just wants to belong somewhere, and Tom Hanks squashes any ego to play the flat-foot FBI guy who dogs his tail. Divorce is a subject close to Spielberg, and he must have been drawn to the story of a kid dealing with it...by doing anything he wants, and DeCaprio's Frank could be Empire of the Sun's "Jim," another loose cannon on deck, all semi-grown-up. There's some particularly good work by Christopher Walken and Jennifer Garner along the way, and a snazzy, jazzy score that lets John Williams go back in time to when he was a jazz session-man named Johnny Williams. Look for Amy Adams in an early role. Spielberg was always able to spot talent and use it early.
The Terminal (2004) What Spielberg accomplished with Catch Me If You Can was needed on The Terminal, as, for some reason, its a return to heavy-handed direction. Maybe its because the film is so set-bound (A nearly-scale jet terminal and concourse was constructed to exacting detail on a sound-stage and the majority of filming took place there), or maybe the director thought there was a bigger message (a comment on the situation of illegal immigrants, perhaps? If so, it's buried under too much Spielberg-business) but the story of a Slavic visitor whose homeland goes to war and leaves him without a country and with invalid papers--thus making him incapable of leaving the terminal without being arrested and deported--overstays its visa. There is some great work with the minimum-wage employees of the port who form a greek chorus and cheering section for Hanks' character. But the film goes astray with Catherine Zeta-Jones as a cute/clutzy stew. You just don't buy her as being so pathetic. Ultimately when all is revealed one gets the impression of a balloon encased in concrete. All the potential charm is squeezed out of it by Spielberg's leaden direction. Spielberg would again take a year break and then quickly produce another two films in a year.
The War of the Worlds (2006) Spielberg and Cruise again. This time Spielberg was paying homage to the original Paramount film, as well as Welles' (Orson's) radio version, and the original Wells (H.G.) novel, while also drilling down on something that had been fascinating Spielberg since September 11th--the idea of American refugees. War of the Worlds delivers that image in spades. There were all sorts of gripes about the tripod walkers (its from the book!) and the way the story just sort of ends (IT'S FROM THE BOOK! ALRIGHT??!), but at least no one complained about not making the invaders "Martians" anymore. I found Spielberg's devotion to the predecessors admirable, and only once does he succumb to "Tom Cruise-Super Hero" mode, (Cruise is blessedly at his most restrained). Dakota Fanning is extraordinary, and to see the stars of the Paramount version at the end of the trail warmed my heart. The only section of the film that disappoints is the extended scenes in Tim Robbins' basement. Robbins' performance is over-the-top, and the sequence kills any momentum for the film. But all in all, its a great attempt to modernize the classic while staying true to its red roots.
But, there’s more: One can see War of the Worlds as the final part of a trilogy of films, just as Oliver Stone had a trilogy of Viet Nam films—all taking on different perspectives of that conflict. Close Encounters is The Searchers with E.T.’s instead of Commanche’s—little Barry is abducted and it’s his mother's quest to get him back. In E.T. one of the aliens is the one left stranded and he must find his own way home, just as Elliott must turn aside his selfishness and aid his alien-friend in doing so. In War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise is the “Ethan Edwards” character—self-centered, a deadbeat dad, another in a long-line of men with “Peter Pan” syndrome in Spielberg films. In his “search” he must get his family home and reunited with their mother. And his hanging-back from going inside that home is a direct reflection of the ending of The Searchers (In fact, I was half-way expecting Cruise to grip his arm at the end, but he didn’t).
Munich (2006) The same year as War of the Worlds, Spielberg came out with this. It's the fictionalized story of a specific Mossad unit's hunting down of the perpetrators of the Munich Massacre at the '72 Olympics. It had been filmed once before as "Sword of Gideon" for the Showtime cable channel, but Spielberg and his scripters ("Angels in America" author Tony Kushner and veteran scribe Eric Roth) pull out all the stops and consider the cost of revenge on the team-members and the future outcome of that mission. Brutal and completely cynical, Munich is a very mature telling of a spy story, with all the possibilities for compromise, double-dealings and betrayals--as well as the identification with the "other side" that a story of this type can lend itself to. Plus, there are all the set-pieces of assassinations that Spielberg winds up like lethal Swiss watches. It's a bit like "Mission: Impossible" with guilt, and there are images from this movie that you will never, ever get out of your head. Eric Bana leads the cast with a couple of the assassins played by future Bond Daniel Craig and Ciarán Hinds. Plus, look for Mathieu Amalric and Marie-Josée Croze of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. After two films in the shadow of the dust-cloud of 9/11, Spielberg decided to lighten up for his next film. But that shadow still remained.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull(2008) Full review here and here. Comfort food. That's what you could call the fourth "Indiana Jones" film, after the harrowing one-two punch of his previous films. It was a chance to team with old pals, and do something lighter and more fanciful. But getting a story was the tough part. Spielberg, Lucas and star Harrison Ford tossed ideas around for years, leading to a decade of anticipation and false-expectations. When the movie was actually released, the fan-boys turned on it, as stretching credulity too far ("Nuking the fridge" became a variation of "jumping the shark"), as if the first three films were somehow rooted in reality. Please.
"Crystal Skull" represents the true sequel to the original "Raiders" in terms of quality and verve. Where the other films were "variations on a theme" to the first, "Crystal Skull" embraces the filmic-culture of the time it is set. Instead, of the raucous serials of the 40's, this one is set in the 50's with such B-movie drive-in staples as Red-scare villains, hot-rodders, biker-boys, nuclear consequences and Invaders from Another World—I was only slightly disappointed that a nuclear explosion didn't create a giant creature-critter off in the distance. The film is buttressed by two "Indy-in-thrall" shots—one of a nuclear explosion and the other of a inter-dimensional ship tearing up the landscape in lift-off, that represent a choice between the destructive and the transportive, and serves as a cautionary presentation of choice for the MacGuffin of the story—knowledge and its uses. There's more to "Crystal Skull" than its detractors have the patience to see. An article in the works will explore that, and speculate about what would be fun in the future...IF a rumored fifth "Indiana Jones" film comes to fruition. Part of me hopes it doesn't, because Spielberg could be better used on other projects.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) Full review here. Spielberg teamed up with Peter Jackson to make this motion-capture animation version of the internationally popular Tintin books by Hergé. Fun idea, especially for the ever-growing international audiences that seem to be a bit more predictable than jaded American ones. But Tintin gave those who had been following Spielberg a special treat—an answer to a question no one had dared consider—what would Spielberg do with a film if he had no limitations whatsoever? The results are almost hallucinatory. The film starts out with a fairly standard pattern of Spielberg wizardry, pin-wheeling shots and edits. But before long, it turns into one long tracking shot, moving in and out of flashback, wheeling through chases that move from perspective to perspective without so much as a cut, stunts that couldn't be filmed, let alone approved, and enough dog endangerment to produce life-threatening seizures in an entire kennel of ASPCA inspectors. It's 1941 without the "restraint" and with a bit more class. The learning curve of Spielberg with this film came quickly, conquering the "uncanny valley" and allowing the characters to squint to overcome it. And given its nautical theme, there's enough swaying from flash-back to flash-forward to evoke a certain wooziness. Still, it makes you wonder what other tricks Spielberg might have up his sleeve, given no restraint. The thought is almost scary.
Spielberg is approaching the best of both worlds--he's working with some of the finest dramatists and authors available, while keeping his visual eye peeled for the striking image. If he has one weakness entering into his Senior Year, it is that constant desire to make Play-Mountains out of Mole-Hills.**** He can do anything he wants, with as much money as people can throw at him. But, Spielberg tends to work best with constraint...whether with time or budget, and that has a tendency to make him come up with better story-telling solutions than if he could do everything he wanted--a lesson learned from Jaws and Raiders... At least, he seems to know that--with his extended pre-production periods and his break-neck pace making movies these days. As for subject matter, his "light" films now carry darker nuances, while his more heavy subjects are benefiting from his more streamlined directorial style. Spielberg seems to have left his naivete behind, while keeping his sense of wonder...and outrage. Of all his contemporaries (Coppola, Lucas, Scorsese, DePalma), he has managed to broaden and deepen his technique and subject matter in a cinematic environment that goes for the quick buck, and least common denominator. Of all of them, Spielberg seems to be the one getting better and wiser, in an age of the dumbed down movie despite all the money and clout he has earned throughout his career. It will be fascinating to see what he does with it in the future.
Freshman Year (1971-1981)
Sophomore Year(1982-1993)
* One particular cast-member is a funny one: Darren Burrows who played "Ed," Cicely's aspiring film-maker and an obsessive student of Spielberg in "Northern Exposure."
** I have a vivid memory of watching "Ryan" for the first time. Ten minutes in, I realized I was in pain, so I pulled my head out of the movie, and realized I was ducking down in my seat. To avoid the bullets. I straightened up to watch the rest of the movie, but I did it with respect.
*** I've heard this rumor that its Kevin Costner as the German soldier shot through his rifle sight. Sure looks like him.
**** He did this literally—though in reverse—in the fourth Indiana Jones movie.
Steven Spielberg, Freshman Year
Duel (1971) Precocious with movie cameras and making his own home-movie features at an early age while growing up in an Arizona suburb, Steven Spielberg also had enough chutzpah once he was of age, to sneak onto the Universal lot and abscond his own office, Then with hard work and mentoring, he got to direct his first television feature--a segment of the "Night Gallery" pilot starring the formidable Joan Crawford. It was the stuff of industry legend. But folks really stood up and took notice with this "ABC Movie of the Week" adaptation of Richard Matheson's bare-bones short story: a man in a car against...something... in an 18-wheeler, out in the desert. In a TV environment where budgets ruled all, Spielberg managed to give his minimalist film a movie feel, with elegant travelling shots, charging effects techniques, and, in moments calling for panic, almost-hallucinatory extreme close-ups. But there's more to it than technique. Spielberg also gives the demon-truck the supernatural quality it deserves, creating a seemingly unstoppable foe. He provides a rousing climax, then ends with a melancholy, existential coda, elevating the car-versus-truck story. He also had the benefit of an all-stops-out performance by the underutilized Dennis Weaver.
The Sugarland Express (1974) With all that was to come after, folks forget that Spielberg's first theatrical feature film was this Goldie Hawn...er, "vehicle," featuring a long, slow car chase, an unsympathetic lead (even if her intentions are good) and a down-beat ending. Critics took notice, but nobody bought tickets, an occurrence that wouldn't happen again for awhile. Goldie plays a mom who springs her husband (William Atherton) out of prison, takes a guard hostage (Michael Sacks) and leads a convoy of patrol cars (led by Ben Johnson) on a quixotic trip to rescue her child from a foster home. Spielberg wouldn't attempt this level of crowd-no-pleaser 'til later in his career. The script is by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, both of whom would be taken under Spielberg's wing and figure in several more projects with Spielberg's name attached. The director also populated his cast with a fair percentage of locals with no previous acting experience for color, a technique he'd also employ in his next "little" film.
Jaws (1975) You'll find an early analysis here. There's not much to add, other than, with time and close inspection, the seams show a bit more in this roller-coaster crowd-teaser about an "eating machine" picking off citizens of a Massachusetts beach community during high-tourist season. The movie's bi-polar: On land, it's a Hitchcockian tease, but on open water, it's a bit like Duel--frenetically hyper-busy with bits of business and one crisis after another. But what could the kid do? He had a shark movie, but for 95% of filming he had no shark. Water and weather conditions changed from moment to moment, but John Williams' insistent score keeps you focused on the action. And he's helped immeasurably by an odd, brilliantly picked cast. Spielberg's lead was a character actor usually given sinister second-banana roles, and for the other denizens of the good ship Orca, chose two character actors who, in style and personality, were oil and water: the classically trained Welsh boozer/playwright Robert Shaw, and the pinched, hectoring Actor's Studio product Richard Dreyfuss. With a cast like this, the shark's almost superfluous for generating drama. Spielberg changed the book considerably and provided a "wowser" of a finish (in the book, the shark just...dies) that, over the original author's objections,* pays off mightily. Over-time and over-budget, it became the first wide-opening Hollywood blockbuster, setting the stage for how films were presented, marketed and hyped for the next 30 years.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Flush with the success of Jaws and his name now a household word, Spielberg parlayed his clout to make a dream project that star Richard Dreyfuss announced on "The Mike Douglas Show" "will turn Columbia Pictures into a parking lot" if it wasn't a success. Based on a bit of one of his childhood 8mm movies, partially on a commissioned script by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), the evolving storyline started out as a film about a pesky alien attack, and turned into one about obsession, dissolution and ecstatic epiphany. "Everyman" contractor Roy Neary is touched by a light from beyond and the scorch-marks it leaves on his face dig deep into his brain leading to a compulsive scavenger hunt-like search for the answers. He's joined by other adrift souls (including a mother searching for her alien-abducted toddler) and, Job-like, is rewarded for his trials...and his faith.** Released the same year as Star Wars and uncompleted to Spielberg's satisfaction at the time, it can now be seen as he intended (and without the unnecessary scenes inside the Mother-ship that bankrolled Spielberg's tinkering). The completed film shows Spielberg's willingness to broach dark material before making his way to the light at the end of the tunnel. It also shows his growing directorial skills with kids (as was briefly displayed in "Jaws") not only in the performance of the pre-verbal Cary Guffey, but also in the heart-breaking performances of the actors who portrayed the Neary children.
1941 (1979) After the Jaws/CE3K one-two-punch, Spielberg set his view-finder on a screwball/slapstick comedy--ala It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World--the basis of which was a John Milius/Robert Zemeckis/Bob Gale script about California attack hysteria in the days following Pearl Harbor. What was a relatively clever, modest script ballooned into an elaborate loud-mouthed farce with a star-studded cast headed by a coke-addled John Belushi and the likes of John Candy, Dan Ackroyd (of course), Slim Pickens, Warren Oates, and even Christopher Lee and Toshiro Mifune (playing it straight). 1941 is barnacle-encrusted with in- and out-house jokes, starting with the same skinny-dipping gal from the beginning of "Jaws" being hoisted into the air on the periscope of a surfacing Japanese submarine. It's all "Jerry Lewis"-subtle and the wanton destruction on several fronts is considerable and wearying and ultimately signifying...not much. But it could have been even more extreme: John Wayne was too miffed at what he considered the anti-Americanism in the script to play General Stilwell (Robert Stack stepped in), and the lookouts on the Ferris Wheel were originally to be "Honeymooners" Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (but became Murray Hamilton and...Eddie Deezen). 1941 bombed at the box-office and all the blame went to Spielberg for running over-budget and overboard. Hollywood dismissed him as an irresponsible flame-out. But he had friends in high places.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) On a post-Star Wars vacation in Hawaii, George Lucas and Spielberg made plans for a series of films based on the old movie adventure serials, but amped up with modern story-telling techniques and special effects centered around a globe-trotting archaeologist named Indiana Jones (Tom Selleck was the front-runner to play him, but as he was tied up playing "Magnum, P.I." on TV, Harrison Ford slipped on the ever-present fedora).*** Based on a story by Lucas and Phillip Kaufman, Spielberg protégé Larry Kasdan fashioned a taut, wise script winking at the genre and poking fun at the clichés while playing up the mysticism. With the overview of Lucas, Spielberg, for once, kept tight rein on the production and came in on time and under budget, allowing him to retrieve his industry cred—helped, no doubt, by the healthy receipts of a cracker-jack film. Spielberg's career was revitalized, and more importantly, his work with Lucas inspired him to form his own business model for film-making. he would stop being a studio work-for-hire and, within a year, would start directing and developing film projects under his own production masthead, named for one of his student films...Amblin Entertainment.
