The Books of My Life: Steven Spielberg

Donald Mott's and Cheryl McAllister Saunders's Steven Spielberg (New York: Twayne, Twayne Filmmakers Series, 1986) is a solid workmanlike introduction to the film and TV work of director and producer Steven Spielberg. Mott and Saunders explore the production, structure, and reception of almost all of Spielberg's films and TV work from Duel in 1971, to, very briefly since it had just been released, The Color Purple in 1985.

Mott and Saunders note the theme at the heart of Spielberg's work until 1985, the theme of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. They note Spielberg's preference for action over character development, his penchant for heavily back-lit lighting that is slightly diffused, his preference for suburban locations, and his influences. Mott and Saunders note the influence of other films and filmmakers in Spielberg's work, something that is not surprising given that Spielberg is one of the movie brats, as Michael Pye and Lynda Miles (The Movie Brats, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1979 ) call the baby boomers brought up on a steady diet of movie watching who became filmmakers in the late seventies and early eighties. These influences, in Spielberg's case, include the wish upon a star Disney film, the Capracorn of Frank Capra, the films of John Ford, Hitchcockian suspense, and the drama and comedy of Billy Wilder with its dark edges. These dark edges may be slighter in Spielberg's case but they are there, as Mott and Saunders note, in Spielberg's portrayal of the dark governmental officials in Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

Some might take umbrage at some of Mott's and Saunders's claims. Both argue, for example, that at least some of the films Spielberg produced are Spielberg films, Poltergeist (1982), for example, which was directed by Tobe Hooper, a film that really brings the darkness to, what seems like the same suburb in which E.T. was set.

Mott's and Saunders's Steven Spielberg is a good if unspectacular introduction to the work of Steven Spielberg. Like all books published while a director is still active it is, of course, limited by the fact that Spielberg has directed 23 films since The Color Purple many of them, like that film, of a more adult nature than the child in all of us films he largely made before 1985. An exploration of these further 23 films may, of course, neccesitate a revision of Spielberg's themes and mise-en-scène.