Steven Spielberg transformed Hollywood with “Jaws”, inventing the modern blockbuster. His flair and his talent have not failed since.
The output of The Fabelmans, Wednesday, February 27, offers the opportunity to revisit the abundant filmography of Steven Spielberg, a key director in the cinema world since Jaws, standard meter of the blockbuster. In seven films, like seventh art, the constancy and diversity of a filmmaker who prances at the top of the box office since 1975.
“Jaws”: blockbuster
Hollywood has always produced huge movies, like Intolerance (1916) madness of women (1922), or Gone with the wind (1939), with pharaonic budgets and overwhelming success. The phenomenon was exhausted in the sixties to be reborn in 1975 with the adaptation of Robert Schekley’s bestseller jaws (Jaws in French) by Steven Spielberg. Television director, notably with his masterful Duel (1971, Grand Prize at the Festival d’Avoriaz), distributed in theaters in France, he was entrusted with the project, which he was to transform into a worldwide phenomenon.
The director’s talent is essential in the atmosphere given to the small seaside town of Amity, whose beach is haunted by a murderous great white shark, leading to a mission at sea to bring it down. Its brilliant interpreters (Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss), a relentless action, on the music of a composer who will be identified with these same blockbusters, John Williams, make the film a great moment of cinema which has not not aged a bit.
“Encounters of the 3rd kind”: generation “Star Wars”
In 1977, Star Wars confirms the revolution that Hollywood has been experiencing since Jaws, with the return of genre films. In the process, a myriad of films are oriented towards space (Alien, The Black Hole, Star Trek, the movie…). Steven Spielberg chose to draw inspiration from UFO sightings which, in the early 1970s, experienced an incredible wave both in the United States and in France. It is based on a screenplay by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) who will withdraw from the project after the changes made to his script by the director. This will make it an eponymous novel published in 1979 (J’ai lu editions). While for years movies have depicted warlike extraterrestrials, Encounter of the 3rd kind imagine peaceful aliens seeking direct contact with humans.
Magnificently photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond (among the most beautiful nights in cinema), lyrical to the music of John William with its five pentatonic notes anchored in the memory of all the spectators, the film is a rise in power until the climax. The visit to the “mother ship”, a gigantic lantern of multicolored lights orchestrated by the master of special effects Douglas Trumbull was the cinematic event of 1978.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark”: did you say serial?
Spielberg teams up with fellow Blockbuster King George Lucas to make Raiders of the Lost Arkui will prove to be the prototype of the Indiana Jones franchise in 1982. It was Lucas who whispered in the ear of his colleague and friend his project to revive the serials (soap operas on the big screen) of the 1930s and 1940s. They promise to make a trilogy of it if the success is there. We know the rest: four films and a fifth in the making, as well as a series (The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones which is preparing its second season).
The breathtaking opening scene sucks the viewer into a whirlwind of exotic adventures, from Peru to Egypt to Nepal. Spielberg chooses Harrison Ford to play his reckless archaeologist, after his revelation in Han Solo in Star Wars. Good choice: the actor brings all his “coolness”, his humor and his charisma to the intrepid treasure seeker, confronted with many journeys, traps, and belligerent competitors. Spielberg wins the timpani again. For the first time, he will leave his place as director on the series to James Mangold (Logan, Le Mans 66), for the fifth installment in the franchise: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, expected in France on June 23, 2023.
“ET the extraterrestrial”: the elf of the stars
Steven Spielberg had said that he would have liked to give a sequel to Dating of the 3rd kind. If that didn’t happen, AND keep track of it. The film adapts a screenplay by Melissa Mathison, ex-wife of Harrison Ford, who will write several films about childhood (The Black Stallion, The Indian in the Closet, The BGG). ET, the extra-terrestrial will remain at the top of the world box office for eleven years, before being dethroned by Steven Spielberg again with Jurassic Park (1993). The young Elliot of the film, who befriends an extraterrestrial is already the Spielberg that we find in The Fabelmans. We go from friendship to love of cinema. As for the split family in the film, it comes from his own youth, which he evokes more directly today.
The director created the year of the shooting of the film his production company Amblin Entertainment. Its logo is taken from an image from the film: the silhouette of Elliot on a bicycle with ET in a basket passing in front of the Moon. The end of the film brought tears to crowds around the world.
“Schindler’s List”: the film with seven Oscars
Taxed as a mainstream entertainment and fantasy director, Steven Spielberg has since turned to more serious subjects. The color purple (1985), on slavery in the southern states of the United States. The African-American community will return to its films Amistad (1997), and lincoln (2012). Schindler’s List, in 1994, is undoubtedly the peak of Steven Spielberg’s so-called “dramatic” filmography. The subject adapts the true story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler who saved some 1,200 Jews from deportation and extermination during World War II. Roman Polanski and Martin Scorsese refused the project, Spielberg, of Jewish origins, takes it.
The film was well received by critics and won seven Oscars, including those for best film and best director in 1994. The film evokes the Shoah in black and white, from the Krakow ghetto to the death camps, under the eyes of Schindler, his Jewish employee, and SS Second Lieutenant Amon Göth who would become commandant of the Płaszów concentration camp. The film reveals to the public Liam Neeson (Schindler) and Ralph Fiennes (Göth), thus opening to them the career that we have known for them since, alongside Ben Kingsley, already a seasoned actor. The horror of the Jewish genocide is treated by Spielberg with omnipresent humanism in all his films, making Schindler’s List the essential film on the subject. Spielberg will not be paid as a director, considering that he would then have received “blood wages”.
“Jurassic Park”: the digital return of the dinosaurs
Universal Sidney manager Jay Sheinberg had given Spielberg the green light to Schindler’s Listif it was running before Jurassic Park. The director complying with the request, he shoots a film of pure fantasy that will once again change the course of cinema. If we find childhood and the dynamics of its entertainment, Jurassic Park marks a date in the use of digital images in films. After more or less successful demonstrations since tron (1982), the process progressed continuously but without totally convincing. Special effects specialist Phil Tippett and George Lucas’ studio ILM will refine the CGI of the dinosaurs, blending them with life-size specimens animated by electronics (animatronics) on set. The result, after editing, will amaze the whole world. Peter Jackson will say: “I told myself that I could do The Lord of the Rings when I saw Jurassic Park”.
We find in this film his pleasure in horrifying the viewer. It consists here of inflicting the worst frights on a duo of ten-year-old children, and enameling their films with explicit horror images, like that of the director of Communication of the park being torn apart by a tyrannosaurus. The film was at the time the highest financial success ever in the world, surpassing AND the extra-terrestrial, previous title holder
“Saving Private Ryan”: to the heroes
Spielberg’s second World War II film, We have to save the soldier Ryan is inspired by a true story, such as Schindler’s List. That of the Niland brothers, a sibling of American soldiers decimated during the conflict. In the film, on the first day of the Normandy campaign after D-Day, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) is given the task of finding the last of the four Ryan brothers and repatriating him to the United States, the other three having been killed in action (two in Normandy and one in the Pacific).
The opening scene of the landing at Omaha Beach, which saw some 4,7000 Americans killed, the worst Allied losses of the operation, is a piece of anthology. Alternating exterior and underwater views from the troop transport barges to the mainland, it is a deluge of lead that falls, and its share of horribly mutilated wounded that parades. The quest of Miller and his battalion makes it possible to follow the first hours of the landing in the bocage where there is strong German resistance. This will make American soldiers doubt the relevance of sacrificing so many men to save only one. Finally found, Private Ryan is interpreted by an actor dedicated to a great career, Matt Damon in his first appearance on screen. The film will be crowned with five Oscars, including Best Director (the second for Spielberg) and Best Actor for Tom Hanks.