Spielberg the Sensational!

During an interview on the set of one of her last films, Joan Crawford pointed the director out to the journalist and said: "Go and interview that boy. He is going to be the biggest director of all time!" And she was right. "That boy" was Steven Spielberg.

Since 20 June 1975, when Jaws was released and became the first movie to gross $100 million at the US box office, Steven Spielberg has become a genre and a phenomenon unto himself. Not since Hitchcock or Walt Disney has any filmmaker brought us so many scenes or images that have branded themselves into our collective consciousness: a giant rolling boulder, a brachiosaurus leaping to eat a tree branch, a girl in a red coat walking through the Warsaw Ghetto, Roy Scheider leaping from his beach chair after seeing a shark attack, and, of course, a bike flying past the moon, to name but a few. All of those were destined from the start to become iconic.

But Steven is a genuine artist; he was never in it for the money or esteem. Whether you like his style or not, his passion for and faith in the medium itself is unmistakable. I feel I can confidently say this because when I've watched films from directors whose styles I dislike, I really still have sensed their love for the art-form (and if they didn't love it, why would they be working in it anyway?). And while initially he may not seem to have a distinctive directorial style, that's not quite true. As opposed to more overtly visual directors like Burton or Luhrmann, you just have to look deeper into a Spielberg film to find the visual (or auditory) uniqueness. A common motif he uses is light and its sources (for instance the candle-lighting scenes in Schindler's List, Celie reading under the sun in The Color Purple, the lamp scene in Saving Private Ryan and, of course, E.T.'s finger), and on the soundtrack he often punctuates scenes of violence or tension with random music from one of the characters (see the Ghetto apartment block raid in Schindler's List, intercut with pianistry). And of course there's the backward dolly zoom in action scenes, first used in Jaws.

But his recurring themes are what you can most recognise a Spielberg movie through: loneliness, family conflict, war, coming of age, intolerance, adventure. I consider him for these reasons a very Dickensian storyteller, but he still takes all these themes and tropes and makes them his own. And though I can understand how many people find his work cloying or manipulative, he delivers sentiment with such sincerity and charisma that in most cases I can never help but find it utterly enchanting.

And now he has (perhaps inevitably) joined forces with Disney to bring Roald Dahl's The B.F.G. to the screen, and it is just marvellous. He has brought to life this very meaningful tale of two outcasts - an orphaned little girl and the Big Friendly Giant - who, despite initial conflict, take a journey that changes them both. Steven's usual collaborators, editor Michael Kahn, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and of course the greatest film composer there ever was, John Williams, have yet again all served him superbly. But most fittingly, his late E.T. collaborator (and former Mrs. Harrison Ford) Melissa Mathison wrote a beautiful screenplay. It could be his best film this decade (although I also loved Bridge of Spies and particularly War Horse).

All great directors have made at least one stinker. For me Spielberg's is Hook, and for that matter Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade should've been just that. And there are five of his movies I still haven't seen: Duel, 1979, The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Always and Amistad. But we should stop holding celebrities to a higher standard than everybody else, and Steven has delivered enough silver screen magic to cover ten decent directors. Love or hate Steven Spielberg, his legend is undeniable. And I'm sorry, but I had to close this way: he is a one-man DreamWorks.