Post by erik on Dec 18, 2023 9:45:18 GMT -5
Today marks the 77th birthday of the man still considered to be the single most successful filmmaker in history" Steven Spielberg.
Thirty years ago, this great director, long thought of as the ultimate purveyor of "popcorn" films, and who had already had a massive box office hit earlier with Jurassic Park, came up with a film that hit very close to him. That film was the Holocaust epic Schindler's List, the story of how an opportunistic Nazi businessman named Oskar Schindler had managed to find enough of a conscience to employ approximately 1,200 Jewish laborers at his enamelware factory in Czechoslovakia during the height of what Hitler was doing in World War II, and thus save them from the horrors of what six million others of their faith suffered. Because Spielberg chose to shoot this movie in black-and-white, because of its three-hour, fifteen-minute running time, and because of its subject matter, no one expected this film to really do much of anything...which just goes to show how badly this director could be underestimated, and how poorly people judged his abilities. Schindler's List ended up winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and it ended up making some $200 million at the box office. It spurred Spielberg on to be more open about his Jewish faith, and to chronicle the lives of those who had survived the Holocaust while those people were still alive.
The critical, artistic, and comemrcial success of Schindler's List also changed the way Spielberg thought of himself as a filmmaker. He could no longer be seen only as a director of high-speed thrills and such (and even films like Jaws, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and E.T. were always far more artistic than they were given credit for). He realized that he could balance between being someone who delivered the expectations of the box office and someone with artistic ambitions all his own; and in the ensuing three decades, the two sides of him would meet up with a huge amount of success, particularly with the 1998 World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, the 2015 Cold War drama Bridge Of Spies, and 2017's The Post. And while his last two films, the 2021 re-imagining of West Side Story and his quasi-autobiographical 2022 film The Fabelmans, were box office disappointments, artistically they did exceptionally well for themselves.
Earlier this year, Spielberg was interviewed by Stephen Colbert about The Fabelmans, and how he, Spielberg, was extremely troubled by the re-emergence of bigotry in America, particularly of the anti-Semitic kind. His experiences with it as a kid, growing up in places where he and his family were often the only Jews for miles, particularly in Northern California in 1964, made him very sensitive to the emotional and human needs of others, regardless of race, color, or creed, which is one of the reasons so many of his films are emotional journeys. This was certainly true of Schindler's List and The Fabelmans, and in how he dealt with the anti-Hispanic bigtory of 1957 New York in West Side Story.
Steven Spielberg is a man who is not afraid of "failure" as a filmmaker, any more than his fellow Arizonan Linda ever was as a singer. What he comes up with next in what he admits is the twilight of his career is now anybody's guess. But don't ever bet against this man.
Thirty years ago, this great director, long thought of as the ultimate purveyor of "popcorn" films, and who had already had a massive box office hit earlier with Jurassic Park, came up with a film that hit very close to him. That film was the Holocaust epic Schindler's List, the story of how an opportunistic Nazi businessman named Oskar Schindler had managed to find enough of a conscience to employ approximately 1,200 Jewish laborers at his enamelware factory in Czechoslovakia during the height of what Hitler was doing in World War II, and thus save them from the horrors of what six million others of their faith suffered. Because Spielberg chose to shoot this movie in black-and-white, because of its three-hour, fifteen-minute running time, and because of its subject matter, no one expected this film to really do much of anything...which just goes to show how badly this director could be underestimated, and how poorly people judged his abilities. Schindler's List ended up winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and it ended up making some $200 million at the box office. It spurred Spielberg on to be more open about his Jewish faith, and to chronicle the lives of those who had survived the Holocaust while those people were still alive.
The critical, artistic, and comemrcial success of Schindler's List also changed the way Spielberg thought of himself as a filmmaker. He could no longer be seen only as a director of high-speed thrills and such (and even films like Jaws, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and E.T. were always far more artistic than they were given credit for). He realized that he could balance between being someone who delivered the expectations of the box office and someone with artistic ambitions all his own; and in the ensuing three decades, the two sides of him would meet up with a huge amount of success, particularly with the 1998 World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, the 2015 Cold War drama Bridge Of Spies, and 2017's The Post. And while his last two films, the 2021 re-imagining of West Side Story and his quasi-autobiographical 2022 film The Fabelmans, were box office disappointments, artistically they did exceptionally well for themselves.
Earlier this year, Spielberg was interviewed by Stephen Colbert about The Fabelmans, and how he, Spielberg, was extremely troubled by the re-emergence of bigotry in America, particularly of the anti-Semitic kind. His experiences with it as a kid, growing up in places where he and his family were often the only Jews for miles, particularly in Northern California in 1964, made him very sensitive to the emotional and human needs of others, regardless of race, color, or creed, which is one of the reasons so many of his films are emotional journeys. This was certainly true of Schindler's List and The Fabelmans, and in how he dealt with the anti-Hispanic bigtory of 1957 New York in West Side Story.
Steven Spielberg is a man who is not afraid of "failure" as a filmmaker, any more than his fellow Arizonan Linda ever was as a singer. What he comes up with next in what he admits is the twilight of his career is now anybody's guess. But don't ever bet against this man.
