Steven Spielberg Arguably the Most

Steven Spielberg

Arguably the most famous and wealthy filmmaker in the world, Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 16, 1946. After living briefly in New Jersey, the family relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona where young Steven began his interest in filmmaking at a very young age. As a pre-teen, he charged admission to his home movies while his sister sold popcorn. At the age of 12, his completed his first production that included a script and actors, and just one year later at the age of 13, Spielberg won a prize for a 40-minute war movie he titled Escape to Nowhere. (filmmakers.com, 2009) Spielberg decided to follow his passion and apply to film school, but after failing to gain admittance to the traditional major programs, he ended up enrolling at California State University in Long Beach to study English. His education was cut short when he starting working at Universal Studios, and after his first production there, 1968's Amblin, he became the youngest director ever to be signed to a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio. (filmmakers.com, 2009)

Beginning in the 1970s, Spielberg directed a string of blockbuster hits such as Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), which was the highest grossing film ever at that time. Besides directing, Spielberg also moved in to producing as was behind two of the biggest movie trilogies of the last thirty years, Indiana Jones and Back to the Future. (imdb.com, 2010) Critics may have labeled him as a mere pop-culture director, someone who made big-budget "popcorn" movies, but in the 1990s, Spielberg produced two films, Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) which won him two Oscars for Best Director, and one Best Picture nod for Schindler's List. He was now both a commercial and critical success beyond question. This essay will focus on these last two films by giving a brief history of each, analyzing a few important scenes and characters, and a personal response to each film.

The story of Oskar Schindler had its genesis with one of the Jews that he saved from death during the Holocaust, Poldek Pffeferberg. Pffeferberg originally tried to produce a biopic about Schindler in 1963 but the film did not reach production. In 1982, the writer Thomas Keneally took his story and turned it into the book Schindler's Ark; Spielberg was sent a book review of the book, became riveted by the story, and convinced his studio, Universal, to buy the rights. Spielberg felt at that time he did not have the emotional maturity to tackle such a difficult subject, and waited 10 years before taking on the project. (EW.com, 1994) Thomas Keneally was brought on to adapt his book into a screenplay and production began in Krakow on March 1, 1993.

The first of the two scenes from the film I would like to analyze is the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. The key quality that this scene brings to the surface, in my opinion, is irony. The irony of the Germans being the "civilized" master race and the Jews being sub-human animals is turned on its head by the behavior in this scene. It opens with the German troop trucks rolling in, noisily, in a display of the power discrepancy between the two groups. A cut to Schindler on the plateau overlooking the town also indicates his position of relative power. The soldiers run through the streets, yelling, uncontrolled, almost bestial in their nature. The scene cuts to a Jewish family hiding their jewelry in bread in order to eat it and keep it from the Germans. The family is calm, quiet, stoic, and proud -- all human traits in contrast to the animal-like bloodlust of the German troops. The troops enter an apartment house, kill a man in the hall, and then try to make nice with a small boy. This sequence shows the absurdity on the situation, the flashes of humanity even in the worst of villains. The camera moves to the courtyard below and the possessions of the occupants are rained down upon it, the downward motion mimicking the fall into the abyss their lives are about to take.

Two cuts later, again the camera returns to a wide shot of the chaos and violence in the streets, followed by the quiet inside of the hospital where the Jewish doctors euthanize their patients so they can die in peace and dignity before the Nazis come in to shoot them. The key frame in this sequence is the close-up shot of a woman's face n her hospital bed with a beautiful, peaceful smile, another quick glimpse of humanity and caring in the midst of major hostility. This scene is bookended with another cut to Schindler on the cliff overlooking the town; the look on his face shows his first realization of the scope of the violence, dehumanization, and brutality. It is here that Spielberg begins Schindler's transformation from opportunist to humanitarian. Finally, the scene ends with the final piece of irony, a German playing beautiful Mozart piano pieces with killing taking place in the background. Taken in its entirety, this scene is key for two main reasons: 1. It gives the viewer his first real glimpse of the violence/humanity dichotomy, and 2. It is a pivotal moment in Schindler's character development.

The second scene I would like to look at is the interweaving of three stories together, the Jewish wedding in the camp, Goeth and Helen in the cellar, and Schindler at the nightclub. Cinematically, this scene is one of the most adept and skillful parts of the film. The shot of Goeth and Helen in the basement is eerily beautiful; their distance, her look, the stark lighting highlights their differences, but also their shared loneliness. The light creates shadows on Helen that emphasize her gaunt figure, her overriding fear, and her trembling body. The sound of beautiful music from Schindler's scene fades in over this scene, underlining the different emotions, and then cutting back and forth between the three scenes with mirroring motions but starkly different tones and moods. This scene magnifies the jealousy Goeth feels toward Schindler in terms of his likeability, his compassion, his joyfulness. Spielberg again uses the technique of similar motions, this time the sounds of hands -- Goeth hitting Helen, Schindler clapping for the singer, and the wedding guests celebrating -- to again highlight the wide range of emotions taking place simultaneously but worlds apart. The final shot once again uses this tactic of mirroring with the bloodied mouth of Helen cutting to the kiss of newlyweds to Schindler kissing beautiful women. It is joy vs. despair, beautifully rendered.

It had been a long time since I had seen this film, and I had forgotten how powerful it truly is. Despite the horror and the sadness, and the general level of discomfort one feels when watching it, Spielberg provides enough moments of joy and humanity that I always leave feeling relatively optimistic about the world. From an aesthetic perspective, I think the film is beautifully shot and I think the music, by longtime collaborator John Williams, is better and more nuanced than most of his other scores. I think my favorite character is Stern because he allows his cynical side to ebb away, and by the end, he believes in Schindler's goodness and the redemptive power of faith. I am glad I had the opportunity, and the reason, to watch this film again.

Saving Private Ryan, on the other hand, I have seen many times, mainly because it seems to be on a continuous loop on cable TV. The story was written by Robert Rodat who, after visiting a Civil War monument dedicated to eight brothers who died in battle, decided to write a similar story set during World War II. (wikipedia.com, 2010) Rodat's work was submitted to a producer who sent it to Tom Hanks who then shared it with Spielberg. Discussing his goal for the film, he said, "I really don't feel people expect from my movies the same kind of Disney enchantment that they ascribed to me back in the '70s and the first half of the 1980s." Spielberg went into Private Ryan, he says, "assuming the role of a combat cameraman, not assuming the role of an artist." He had one credo: "I wanted to achieve reality." (EW.com, 1998)

The most famous scene in the film is the opening battle sequence of the Normandy landings. This scene encapsulates what I feel to be the dynamic nature of the film itself, the constant back and forth between calm and motion. It opens with near silent shots of the beach with the jagged barriers and then cuts to the violent motion of waves crashing on the troop carriers. Then the close-up and forced calm of Capt. Miller and Sgt. Horvath. Once the gate drops, chaos reigns as bullets rip through the first row of men, then again to the eerie calmness of the underwater camera shots. This section has incredible sound editing with the camera bobbing up and down out of the water and the sound going from muffled to vibrant. Spielberg then gets to the beach and goes back and forth between individual shots of one or two men, and then wider shots of the full scope of the battle. This gives the view the sense of the personal and the large-scale event. Hanks' character finally gets to shelter on the beach and the sound goes quiet as he is shell shocked; this technique of low sound and slow motion creates the feeling of disorientation for the audience. Moving up the beach, the camera is hand-held so the shots are tight and shaky with the people cut off at the sides of the frame. This technique makes the action seem more intimate and gives a real sense of what the action was like on the beach. The scene shows the random way in which lives are ended or spared, and the tracking shot of the triage on the beach is especially powerful as life or death decisions are made in an instant. The last shot is a long tracking shot of the living and the dead with a slow zoom to a dead soldier named Ryan; in this final frame, he sets up the plot of the film.

The second scene I would like to discuss is, for me, of paramount importance to the development of the characters and the story. The group comes upon a German radar tower and Capt. Miller gives the order to take it. This order is questioned and here we see the mission starting to divide and anger the men. As the quick battle ends, the translator is called up to help; he runs through the mist, the "fog of war," to a shot of the team frantically trying to save their medic. The shots cut between the wounded, the hardened soldiers, and then back to the translator, still new to war, who stands off from the group creating an important visual separation. This is the scene where the difficulties of the war, their particular assignment, finally boil over. Capt. Miller moves away from the group, a slow zoom to his face where he breaks down from the stress. Then a series of fast cuts as the men decide what to do with the German prisoner, this is where the dynamism of the film comes back into play as a quiet scene of introspection is replaced with chaotic sound and action.