Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg (born December 18, 1946, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.) American motion-picture director and producer whose diverse films—which ranged from science-fiction fare, including such classics as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), to historical dramas, notably Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998)—enjoyed both unprecedented popularity and critical success.

Early life and work

Spielberg developed an interest in filmmaking as a child, and during his teens his Escape to Nowhere (1962), a 40-minute war movie, won first prize at a film festival. He next directed Firelight (1964), a feature-length science-fiction yarn, which was followed by an accomplished short about hitchhikers called Amblin’ (1968). An executive at Universal Studios saw the latter film and tendered a contract to Spielberg, who began working in the studio’s television division after attending California State College, Long Beach (now California State University, from which he would eventually receive a B.A. in 2002). He directed episodes of various TV series, notably Columbo, Marcus Welby, M.D., and Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law. In 1971 he made his first television movie, Duel, a taut, almost claustrophobic exercise in psychosis that was more intense than typical TV fare (it was released theatrically in Europe). Although Spielberg permitted star Dennis Weaver—who played a motorist chased by a homicidal truck driver—to register a one-note impression of sweaty terror throughout the movie, his handling of the action sequences was staged and executed with bravado. The success of Duel enabled Spielberg to make theatrically released motion pictures, beginning with The Sugarland Express (1974), a chase picture with deft accents of comedy but an inexorable movement toward tragedy; it was anchored by Goldie Hawn’s performance.

Commercial success

Spielberg’s next movie, Jaws (1975), established him as a leading director, and it was one of the highest-grossing films ever. It featured Roy Scheider as the police chief of a resort town who battles a man-eating white shark. Joining him are Richard Dreyfuss as a marine biologist and Robert Shaw as a shark hunter. The highly praised thriller received an Academy Award nomination for best picture, and its ominous soundtrack by John Williams won an Oscar. The film all but created the genre of summer blockbuster—big action-packed movie released to an audience grateful to be in an air-conditioned theatre—and it established many of the touchstones of Spielberg’s work: an ordinary but sympathetic main character is enlightened through a confrontation with some extraordinary being or force that gradually reveals itself as the narrative unfolds.

Spielberg then directed the mystical science-fiction tale Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which he also wrote. Dreyfuss was cast as the lead, and he submitted one of the best performances of his career, as a telephone lineman who encounters an unidentified flying object and subsequently becomes obsessed with UFOs. For the film, Spielberg received his first Academy Award nomination for best director. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography earned the film’s only Oscar, though the special effects were also praised. Spielberg became just the second director in history to score back-to-back $100 million grosses.

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After the disappointing 1941 (1979)—which was received as an unfunny comedy, despite the presence of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd—Spielberg directed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), a loving, expert (if slightly redundant) tribute to old adventure serials. The film and its sequels, which starred Harrison Ford as handsome archaeologist Indiana Jones, used rich colour cinematography, brisk editing, memorable musical soundtracks, and inventive special effects to create a cinematic experience that was typically light yet highly suspenseful. Spielberg received his second Academy Award nomination for best director; the film was also a best picture nominee.

Spielberg’s next film was even more successful. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) was a moving exploration of an alien encounter that cleverly eschewed the epic scale of Close Encounters for the microcosm of its effect on a single California family. Henry Thomas gave a strong performance as the boy who discovers and befriends the stranded alien, and Dee Wallace portrayed his sympathetic mom. The film also featured Drew Barrymore in one of her first roles. As with most Spielberg films to that point, the special effects were a large part of the movie’s appeal—in this case, the wonderfully articulated E.T.—but it was Spielberg’s mastery of human (and alien) emotion that made the movie a blockbuster. Both Spielberg and the film were nominated for Academy Awards, as were Melissa Mathison’s screenplay, Allen Daviau’s cinematography, and Williams’s score; only the latter won.

After directing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Spielberg adapted Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple (1985). The film explores an African American woman’s almost unbearably harsh, yet ultimately fulfilling, life. Color was roundly criticized for downplaying the novel’s lesbian element, for perpetuating stereotypes about black men, and for sentimentalizing life in the Deep South. Nevertheless, it found an audience that appreciated the cast—which included Whoopi Goldberg, Margaret Avery, and Oprah Winfrey, all of whom were nominated for Academy Awards—as well as the script (by Menno Meyjes) and the score (by coproducer Quincy Jones), both of which were also Academy Award-nominated. The film received a nomination for best picture, but Spielberg failed to earn an Oscar nod, a slight that created a small scandal at the time. More important, however, Spielberg had made one of the few commercially successful films about the experience of African Americans, paving the way for similar projects to be green-lighted.

Spielberg chose another critically acclaimed book as the basis of his next film. Empire of the Sun (1987), scripted by Tom Stoppard, was a carefully detailed re-creation of the World War II prison-camp milieu of J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel of the same name. But where The Color Purple was able to convey emotional truth, Empire of the Sun almost let the story about its young protagonist (Christian Bale) drown under a wave of pyrotechnics. It was a box-office failure. Spielberg closed out the 1980s with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Always (1989), an adaptation of the 1943 film A Guy Named Joe. Although Indiana Jones was a hit, Always failed to find an audience.

Spielberg’s tendency toward broad storytelling may have hampered his attempts at more complex filmmaking, and The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, in the view of many critics, lacked emotional depth or insight. Yet the aggressive commercialism and optimism of Spielberg’s films became the prevailing style in Hollywood in the late 20th century. His pervasive influence was recognized in 1986 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when it honoured him with the Irving G. Thalberg Award, given for excellence in producing.