ALWAYS
Somewhat
lost upon initial release – especially in the UK – ALWAYS (1989)
is a beautiful essay on loss and being an adult in love. Spielberg
very rarely tackles love stories in the traditional sense. RAIDERS OF
THE LOST ARK (1981) is hooked to a love story – as is E.T. - THE
EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982). But in choosing 1943’s A GUY NAMED JOE as
the spur for his first remake, Spielberg creates a heartfelt work
looking at being middle-aged and in love, pre-dates the bigger hit
GHOST (1990), and ends up being a heavenly, less high-octane version
of TOP GUN (1986) meets BACKDRAFT (1991).
With
tonal and physical echoes of Spielberg’s work on Amazing Stories
and his pilot (‘The Mission’, 1985), ALWAYS is still replete with
those WWII affectations that Spielberg had also tapped for 1941
(1979), RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) and EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987).
It is a film of old army jeeps, A-26 bombers, airfields, the
officers’ mess, old air-strip tannoys and a family of affectionate
air crew colleagues pulling together. It is also a project that plays
with old Hollywood as the WWII heroism of A GUY NAMED JOE,
square-jawed Brad Johnson cut from another era’s sense of pin-up,
The Platter’s 1954 hit ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ is a recurring
motif and The Ghost of Hollywood Past herself in the languid guise of
Audrey Hepburn’s willowy Hap.
And
steering it all is the founding father of Spielberg onscreen in the
form of Richard Dreyfuss who has yet to leave the skies of CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND as those Seventies movie tropes of
corn-fields, panicking conversations vying for attention, watching
the skies from an airstrip and blue-collar co-workers are all left in
play.
Yes,
it is glazed with late 1980s sentiment, but it is also one of
Spielberg’s most abstract works. Death, grief, suicide, heaven, and
the afterlife are lent a matter-of-fact ease and often communicated
by a simple choice of cut or a shared frame rather than a full-on
display of ILM might. Beautifully shot by Mikael Solomon, that
midnight moment of Dorinda’s plane gliding over a moonlit lake as
John Williams’s music drifts parallel is one of Spielberg’s most
graceful beats.
Always
has a very different dynamic to what has gone before. It plays
like the first personal project Spielberg produced on a quick
turnaround of a movie whim. Curiously for a romance, it is the first
film Spielberg directs where he doesn’t have to make the world fall
in love with its concept, production scope or studio investment. It
is a remarkably small film for the man in-between INDIANA JONES AND
THE LAST CRUSADE (1989) and HOOK (1991), and possibly paved the path
for the director’s quicker produced, less heralded gems like THE
POST (2017) and THE TERMINAL (2004).
SOMETHING
EVIL
Starting
off with some devilish eyes reminding of Boris Karloff, Spielberg’s
1972 TV movie chiller is, of course, a horror precursor to 1982’s
POLTERGEIST and its tale of a contemporary Californian family facing
what lies beneath. It was also Spielberg’s first project after DUEL
(1971) and that (partially) theatrical debut that changed everything
for the director. From those TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962) style
opening titles of a kid drawing, this is Spielberg flexing his movie
muscles with another TV project with which he delivered above and
beyond.
An
astutely shot piece about a city family trying to re-locating to a
haunted farmstead in Pennsylvania, SOMETHING EVIL is never really
that chilling. Yet, in not quite letting the audience in on what the
something evil is, it is a work loaded with tics, beats and creative
choices which mark out Spielberg for evermore. Sandy Dennis’s
Marjorie is a liberal artist mum with a free-thinking, peacenik mind
who doesn’t always question the something wicked which is coming
this way. With her motherly instincts and unkempt hair, Dennis is an
early forerunner of Dee Wallace in E.T - THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL,
JoBeth Williams in POLTERGEIST, Melinda Dillon in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF
THE THIRD KIND and Lorraine Gary in JAWS (1975). Torch beams at
night, radio static, a Peanuts poster on a bedroom wall, the piles of
chatter layering the audio, a family not used to rural life quirks
and old wives’ tales, and that AMBLIN’ (1968)'s glare of the sun
through arid trees – the film is amongst the first to bring that
contemporary Seventies domestic Americana to Spielberg’s work.
SOMETHING
EVIL is totally of its time. It is not just the Seventies Spielberg™
tropes, but it looks like a sunny, early 1970s Coca-Cola ad (the
father figure is even a city ad-man prepping a new drink commercial),
like many an early 1970s TV chiller it takes place in a rural
farmhouse, and hints at the decade’s horror genre now turning its
attentions to kids stories a year before THE EXORCIST (1973).
Furthermore, it contains a lot of Steven Allan Spielberg. The main
kid is called ‘Stevie’, there is a surfeit of gossipy lady
neighbours getting dolled up to throw their local opinions into the
ring, and it is centred on a resourceful and creative mother figure
having to cope with an absentee husband. SOMETHING EVIL also
underlines how these formative Spielberg works were often more
multi-faceted than we remember. EVIL is not just a ghost story of a
haunted house and a kid cut-off from the world. It is about a
community, a shared narrative opened out with many phone
conversations and a young director’s eye in keeping a tale of a
rural farmhouse wilfully contemporary despite the zero budget and the
small screen confines.
THE
POST
Whilst it may be early days
on the print run of this one’s popularity, THE POST is one of
Spielberg’s finest movies. Purportedly worked up with not much
planning or notice, THE POST sees the director return to 1971 and the
year that DUEL changed everything. Yet despite a wide story canvas
with some of America’s key 20th Century influencers and political
movers deliberately in play, one of the early graces of THE POST is
how it is a wholly intimate recounting of those times. With the
weightier and legislative likes of AMISTAD (1998) and LINCOLN (2012)
looking at the humanity of American politics, the smaller THE POST
and its defence of the press could well form the third part of a
Freedom Trilogy.
From
the undulating beams of a midnight photocopier and the light about to
be shone on the truth to a reporter having a shoebox of that truth
deposited in a panic on his typewriter, a Washington dinner party, a
girl wanting her ball back and the preparations of a Supreme Court
hearing, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski ensures this is a film often
shot at desk height with those slithers of normality that Spielberg
uses when telling national stories on a personal scale. THE POST is a
film where the world’s most famous actor, actress, and director all
come together - and not one of them showboats. Despite the current
day political anger spurring the film on, no-one preaches. No one
grandstands. If anything, Hanks pulls back the might of the issue
with a warmth and humour that Jason Robards left to the side of his
Academy-award winning performance as Bradlee.
THE POST is not some easy,
West Coast liberal reaction to the forty-fifth President of the
United States. It is a defence of all writers, artists, principles,
and experts. An early scene involving the discovery of the magnitude
of the papers is set all within an artist’s office surrounded by
movie posters, graphic design boards and artistry. Kaminski’s lens
makes great play of honouring those printing presses, their
mechanisms and how each letter is a piece of communication we should
not take for granted.
And as he always has done –
and alongside fellow producers Amy Pascal and Kristie Macosko Krieger
– Spielberg has responded here with a production marked and blessed
by the labours of women. Its biggest triumph is not an intricate
set-piece, an Oscar-baiting monologue or a vicious verbal spat. It is
Streep’s Graham saying ‘do it‘ and the quietly empowered
middle-aged print room men as they set to silent, but grinning work
and a long night.
A Spielberg classic waiting
perhaps in the wings for its moment, THE POST is about two histories
– that of American politics and that of American cinema.
THE
COLOR PURPLE
This
is Spielberg’s first female-led narrative since SOMETHING EVIL, his
first film without John Williams, his first and only story (so far)
with a queer lead character and a sadly prescient tale thirty or so
years after it should never have been prophetic again. It is also
Spielberg’s first brutal film with a literal and emotional punch
throughout. Met at the time of release with distancing critics and
industry bemusement, THE COLOR PURPLE (1985) often gets lost in the
Spielberg discussion alongside EMPIRE OF THE SUN, SCHINDLER'S LIST
(1993), LINCOLN (2012) and MUNICH (2005). Yet, Alice Walker’s
key tale went there first with a quietly fierce adaptation of a novel
that was still fairly new in 1985. Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
piece was only published three years before and it became the first
weighty novel both Spielberg and Amblin snapped up for the big
screen. Despite Peter Benchley’s JAWS and its vacation-read glories
a decade before, THE COLOR PURPLE represents the first proper opening
of the literary floodgates for Spielberg. JG Ballard’s EMPIRE OF
THE SUN soon follows in 1987 (itself based on a new novel first
published in 1984) and then the published works that spurred on the
subsequent likes of SCHINDLER'S LIST, WAR HORSE (2011), LINCOLN,
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998), BRIDGE OF SPIES (2015), THE BFG
(2016), WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005), READY PLAYER ONE (2018) and
AMISTAD.
One
of the complaints thrown at THE COLOR PURPLE was how Spielberg was
criticised for not being a black filmmaker. But there is an instant
universality to his 1985 drama. It never shirks from presenting one
particular history of black struggles across the decades and does so
with great resolve, warmth, honesty tragedy, and a tangible sense of
community. It is also a searing, valuable indictment on political and
societal attitudes of both America of the early 1900s and the
America of 1985. Incest, religion, male brutality, feminism,
patriarchy, white privilege, sexual abuse, sibling love, and slavery.
These are not the tropes of a director globally framed as the UFO,
thrill-ride director. After E.T. - THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL and INDIANA
JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, Steven Spielberg didn’t have to do
THE COLOR PURPLE. The fact he did and opened his filmmaking skies to
take in wider, darker stories of the human condition will always be
because of that tale of Celie, Georgia, friendships and Alice
Walker’s crucial novel.
AMBLIN’
Like
a great many early works from Steven Spielberg, the short film
AMBLIN’ (1969) is a far more polished and accomplished little film
than it should have been. Even the pre-teen work from the director
immediately conveys a control of story, pace and frame that eludes
many a fledging director.
Shot
in July 1968 along the arid roadside of California, AMBLIN’ is the
beautifully slight tale of two hitchhikers (Pamela McMyler and
Richard Levin) who meet up in the desert en route to the Pacific
Coast Highway and the very stretch of asphalt that later launches
Watching Skies. Dialogue free and musically communicated through
October County’s gently psychedelic folk soundtrack, the pair of
nameless antagonists could well be Chrissie Watkins and her hippy
beau from the opening beach scene of JAWS. Or Roy and Ronnie Neary
from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. Or Clovis and Lou Jean from
THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974). Or Steven and Diane from POLTERGEIST.
The imminent DNA of DUEL, SUGARLAND, SOMETHING EVIL and CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND are all here in this 25-minute curio. As
the two long-haired souls rest, dine and coyly watch each other on
their random trek across dust bowl pit stops and cricket-ridden
evenings, there is almost a Chaplin quality to AMBLIN’. It is about
the adventure of the human spirit, the spontaneity of youth and what
is at the end of the highway.
AMBLIN’ is also a work infused with
sharp camera and editing choices. Shot by Allen Daviau (E.T., EMPIRE
OF THE SUN and THE COLOR PURPLE), the piece is marked by souful
camerawork, glorious silhouettes and messy and sun-drenched cuts that
still hold a fresh, beguiling quality half a century later. It is
often noted than in his formative fever to learn and understand
everything about cinema, the younger Steven possibly missed out on
the late 1960s counterculture and youth revolts around him. AMBLIN’
proves that could not be further from the truth. Here is a work that
is acutely aware of its era, and the divide between young minds and
the wars and propaganda of government. AMBLIN's greatest
success is its sheer celebration and observations of youth. Take out
the camper van, flared denim and stoner soundtrack and AMBLIN' has a
timeless quality and has no doubt been remade by every film student
this side of the Paris student riots.
Interview by Paul Rowlands. © Paul Rowlands, 2018. All rights reserved.
AMBLIN’ is also a work infused with
sharp camera and editing choices. Shot by Allen Daviau (E.T., EMPIRE
OF THE SUN and THE COLOR PURPLE), the piece is marked by souful
camerawork, glorious silhouettes and messy and sun-drenched cuts that
still hold a fresh, beguiling quality half a century later. It is
often noted than in his formative fever to learn and understand
everything about cinema, the younger Steven possibly missed out on
the late 1960s counterculture and youth revolts around him. AMBLIN’
proves that could not be further from the truth. Here is a work that
is acutely aware of its era, and the divide between young minds and
the wars and propaganda of government. AMBLIN's greatest
success is its sheer celebration and observations of youth. Take out
the camper van, flared denim and stoner soundtrack and AMBLIN' has a
timeless quality and has no doubt been remade by every film student
this side of the Paris student riots.Interview by Paul Rowlands. © Paul Rowlands, 2018. All rights reserved.
Watching Skies –
Star Wars, Spielberg and Us is available from The History Press and other retailers.
Mark's website, Twitter account and Instagram account.
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