HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. SPIELBERG

by Dennis Polifroni

If I had to put a name and a face to the person that most changed my life when I was growing up, in terms of compelling me to study all facets of art and story-telling, then it would take all of about three seconds to name Steven Spielberg.

Sure, since those days of T-shirts and popcorn in air conditioned theatres during the sweltering summer months of my youth I’ve grown to respect and love other artists more and with more passion. Yet, Spielberg holds a special place in my heart. His instinctive flair for capturing the right framing and composition for every shot he’s ever taken, his blisteringly precise timing in the editing room to make every moment in every film feel like the crack of a whip, and his awareness of what moves us, made me understand that anything that can be imagined could be put up on the big screen.

A secret, sneak showing of his 1975 blockbuster, adventure thriller, JAWS, with my father when I was 9 years-old, was THE moment I knew I wanted to study all forms of art. That 2 hour and 5 minute rollercoaster ride across the treacherous ocean surfaces has never left me and, even at that junior year of age, I had been fascinated by who could make something so big, so spectacular. So GREAT.

Since 1975 and JAWS (btw, still my personal favorite movie of all time, I’ve seen it over 100 times-not kidding), I’ve followed Spielberg, sometimes blindly, into those cavernous, dark churches we call theatres to see where he would take us next. Sometimes his landscapes were familiar to me (the kids and neighborhoods of E.T.), sometimes dangerous (Raiders of the Lost Ark) but always wonderous (Close Encounters entrances me every time). He took me to far off lands, had me leaping from horses in pursuit of vast fortunes and showed me people and things from other places outside the solar system I was sure, then, existed.

And, yet for all these things he did for me, my study of this man and his work has been, often, poffed off as a venture of excess. I’ve been accused of loving something superficial, intentionally manipulative and false in emotional resonance. His movies, pretty much blockbusters each and every one, have been likened, by the so-called intelligentsia, as FLUFF.

I was crushed. I took the bombardment of negativity leveled at my love for this guy as if I was doing wrong, as if I wasn’t seeing straight. For a while, I began to believe I had been led astray by a charlatan posing as an artist. I felt small, stupid and like I was blind to true value and worth in art.

JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, EMPIRE OF THE SUN, THE COLOR PURPLE and JURASSIC PARK were really nothing more than a gifted technicians ruse to make us shell tons of money into Cineplex malls for something we mistook for art. We had all been had. Spielberg was a money-grubbing devil that used sentimentality, who made us cry and cheer, as a way of lining the pockets of himself and his producers as they laid waste true cinema in lieu of a mass moneymaking machine unconcerned with the visions of artists.

For a while, truthfully, I believed this and felt betrayed.

BUT…

Only a few months after the so-called money-hauling debacle known as JURASSIC PARK premiered, Spielberg unveiled SCHINDLER’S LIST.

In 3 hours and 20 minutes of gritty black and white perfection, Spielberg laid waste his critics that saw him only as a living, breathing ATM deposit machine and showed us how his technical proficiency, so often cited as his major down-fall as an artist, could take us into the darkest part of human emotion and experience. Spielbergs vision of the Holocaust was a full frontal assault on the critics that never realized everything that came from this man prior was just used as a sharpening post for the claws that this new film had in droves. In a single, brilliant, swoop, any doubts about Spielbergs artistic intentions, his use of sentiment and pathos, was laid to rest. His previous flights of fantasy had informed him on the nature of true human emotion and experience and by the time we left the darkened rooms we realized his career was so much more than surface nothing. Everything that had come before was all pointing to those moments in the concentration camps and muddy killing fields.

His films are often infused with tips of the hat to the filmmakers that inspire him, and because I loved HIS films I wanted to see the films he loved. Because of Steven Spielberg I discovered Lean and Kubrick. I fell in love with Chaplin and Murnau and Bergman. I loved movies and Spielberg showed me the reasons why.

For this, and all those films that he made that are forever a part of my living and growing, I say a profound ” THANK YOU!”

Steven Spielberg turned 75 years old today…

To me he’ll always be that baseball cap and T-shirt wearing kid with a movie camera in his hands and a whole lot of gumption in his eyes.

Pictures (top to bottom):

1. “Where did these lights and sounds come from?” CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)

2. SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993)

3. My favorite movie of all-time: JAWS (1975)