Amph The Style of Spielberg

Yes, they owe much to Hitchcock but they are not trying to emulate him like say De Palma. Yet neither can touch the master director's body of work.

You can argue, oh, but M. Night has only done six films, yes, but at the rate of superfluity he is going, these adult targeted "Goosebumps" gimmicks should have worn his audiences by now.

This is offtopic, forgive me.

 

I'm not so sure. The Village's problem was its lack of heart. The Sixth Sense had one, Signs had it, and Unbreakable had it at the end. Lady in the Water looks like it has it, and based on what the reviews say, it's very Signs-shaded and the director's best work.

As for Spielberg, at this point he had done three elemental thrillers. Then with Close Encounters he made something elemental and mysterious but almost fantasy like in nature. I can see comparisons being drawn between Night's next and Close Encounters for that very reason.

Let's just hope this generation doesn't have its 1941.

 

JAWS is one of my absolutely most favorite movies. Definitely my absolute favorite thriller/suspense movie.

Great characters, casting and performances, especially with the three leads. Unforgettable and excellently used score. Suspenseful, humorous, exhilarating. Pulls the viewer in from the start and doesn't let go.

Extremely well directed by Stephen Spielberg. Extremely smart movie making.

Absolutely great movie. One of the very best.

 

Another difference that sets Hitchcock apart is he made highly sophisticated suspense thrillers and displayed a willingness to take risks. He both danced the two-step and waltzed with the Production Codes of his day with racy and risque material. M Night plays it safe, not his style, far more commercial and far more PC. Too many differences. Similarities, Hitchcock had many shiny examples of the McGuffin whereas M Night has relied on resolved twist endings.

 

Ah, but you forget Signs--Shyamalan's only true Hitchcockian film according to himslef--which used alens as MacGuffin only for the "true emotional context" to be revealed at the end when Graham's faith is resolved.

And Lady in the Water is Shammy's "risk" movie. He moved out of Disney, and he's marketing this towards families. We'll see if he succeeds.

Spielberg, in my honest opinion, didn't really start to put his balls out there until he did The Color Purple. And Hitchcock had only two films if I recall that were that were in a totally different realm from his suspense-thrillers--Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Trouble With Harry.

 

My point about Shyamalan was actually that he's not a thriller director at all. His films are dramas told in unconventional ways, and yes they tend to have suspense, but that's not the same thing. Spielberg is actually quite similar, as his films like Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds, while suspenseful, are mostly about something entirely different than dinosaurs and aliens. Of course, nearly all of Spielberg's films have the stamp of the father/son relationships being central to the story.

 

I thought a thriller was a drama with suspense.

Regardless, I think the same can be said for many Hitch films, if we're getting that deep into semantics: Rebecca, Vertigo, Suspicion . . . at the very least.

 

" Jaws " brilliance is that it took its intial viewing audience twenty five years to realize that the shark is not at all the villian or antagonist of the story. It wasnt supposed to take that long but it is supposed to take awhile with repeat viewings before that uncomfortable truth to hit you square in the face, and thats that it is total human failure that leads to the deaths subsequent to Christie, the night swimmer. The shark is doing exactly what the shark is supposed to be doing. Thats why you see the story through the eyes of Brody. He comes to that conclusion on the Orca when hunting the shark - with one man who will stop at nothing to kill the shark, and one man who admires the shark a little TOO much. The book goes out of its way to paint this stuff for you and the movie forces you to really think about human nature versus that of nature in general, which is the reason, IMO, that the movie is widely preferred over the book.

 

Not to mention the fairy tale structure. And also the occasional elemental horror--the truck Duel, the shark in Jaws, the aliens in Close Encounters (minus the horror part), Captain Hook in the first act of Hook (the act that got it completely right), the dinos in Jurassic Park, the aliens in War of the Worlds, etc.

 

Granted, but Hitchcock's thrillers fit the common concept more readily because they deal with darker aspects of the human experience. Spielberg and Shyamalan both tend to focus on positive aspects of life like love, the human spirit, etc. (with notable exceptions, of course, focusing on things like grief which is what gives 'The Sixth Sense' its more true thriller feel). Hitchcock definitely delved into very serious subjects, but they were mostly the 'dark side'.

 

Which agrees with my argument, that Shyamalan is not Hitchcock's successor. Not by a long shot. Leather vs naugahyde (sp?). Leather vs naugahyde.

 

I dont even see where Shyamalan is anything like Hitchcock. He's something totally different. Hitchcock will never have a succesor. DePalma is the closest thing, he does it on purpose, he's a VERY good filmmaker because of it. And he catches a TON of **** because of it.

 

... only Shyamalan is, frankly, still butter stretched thin. I can't say any of his films have been deep experiences. About as deep as my empty bucket of popcorn.

 

I think the misconception with Shyamalan, ever since Signs was a hit, is that he tries to emulate Hitchcock with each film. Like another poster said, that would be Brian DePalma. Shyamalan's only true Hitchcockian film is Signs. His others don't follow that. Signs' main inspiration was The Birds, whereas The Village was inspired by both Wuthering Heights and King Kong. Shyamalan says he sees himself more as an Agatha Christie type--the particular narrative language he speaks in is suspense. It's what appeals to him.

However, Unbreakable, by no stretch of the imagination, is a suspense film.

 

Sorry to have derailed the thread a bit. I meant the parallels with Hitch and Shyamalan to be part of the discussion of Spielberg's own style. However, I really don't want to get into a discussion/debate about Shyamalan here.

 

Back to Jaws. I thought I'd post a little movie trivia courtesy IMDb:

* Steven Spielberg wanted Sterling Hayden for the role of Quint. Hayden, however, was in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for unpaid tax. All Hayden's income from acting was subject to a levy by the IRS, so there was an attempt to circumvent that: Hayden was also a writer, so one idea was to pay him union scale for his acting, and buy a story from him (his literary income wasn't subject to levy) for a large sum. It was concluded that the IRS would see through this scheme, so Robert Shaw was cast instead.

* During pre-production, director Steven Spielberg, accompanied by friends Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and John Milius visited the effects shop where Bruce the shark was being constructed. Lucas stuck his head in the shark's mouth to see how it worked, and as a joke, Milius and Spielburg sneaked to the controls and made the jaw clamp shut on Lucas' head. Unfortunately, and rather prophetically, considering the later technical difficulties the production would suffer, the shark malfunctioned, and Lucas got stuck in the mouth of the shark. When Spielburg and Milius were finally able to free him, the three men ran out of the workshop, afraid they'd done major damage to the creature.

* Charlton Heston was considered for the role of Chief Brody. Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Jon Voight, and Jan-Michael Vincent were considered for the role of Hooper.

* Victoria Principal was considered for the role of Ellen Brody.

* Richard Dreyfuss originally turned down the role of Hooper but had worries after the initial screening of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) and asked for his part back.

* Lee Marvin was considered for the role of Quint by Steven Spielberg, despite his reservations about using big-name actors. Marvin thanked him but replied that he'd rather go fishing.

* In addition to the well-known nickname of "Bruce", Steven Spielberg also called the shark "the great white turd" when he really got frustrated with the troublesome animatronic fish.

* In a recent biography Spielberg revealed how Robert Duvall helped to encourage him into making the movie. In return Spielberg offered the role of Brody to Duvall but he turned it down, fearing that it may make him too famous as a result.

* Charlton Heston was so annoyed with being rejected for the role of Brody that he later made disparaging comments about Spielberg and vowed never to work with him. He later turned down Spielberg's offer of the role of General Stilwell in 1941.

* Author Peter Benchley's choices for whom to cast in the film: Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.

* Steven Spielberg originally wanted Joe Spinell and Frank Pesce to be the two guys on the dock fishing for the shark at night (Pesce as the guy who falls in the water and Spinell shouting to him). Unfortunately, Pesce couldn't make it to Martha's Vineyard.

* Quint's tale of the USS Indianapolis was conceived by playwright Howard Sackler, lengthened by screenwriter John Milius and rewritten by Robert Shaw following a disagreement between screenwriters Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb. Shaw presented his text, and Benchley and Gottlieb agreed that this was exactly what was needed. Whoever was responsible, Quint got the date of the sinking wrong, claiming it was June 29, 1945, when in reality it was 12:14 am on July 30th, 1945. Universal has toyed with the idea of making the "Indianapolis" incident into a film, using a young Quint as the lead, ever since.

* The live shark footage was shot at Seal Rocks, Australia. A real white pointer was cut up and "extended" for the close-up shots.

* When Jaws attacks Hooper's cage, there's live footage of a real Great White with a rope hanging from its mouth. This shark's mouth is clearly much smaller than Jaws' mouth when it attacks the boat moments later. These scenes were filmed by noted shark photographers Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor specifically for the movie.

 

Dont forget that the late great Joe Spinell was supposed to be the guy who loses his wifes roast ( and almost his life ). Plus the ending of the book was just TOO anti climactic, having Brody run out of bulletts with the shark heading straight for him, only to have the shark die from exhaustion and sink to the bottom of the ocean.

 

The novel had about the stupidest ending I've ever read.

 

People realized how crappy the novel was when Spielberg made a movie a thousand times better.

 

* The lighthouse in the film near the beach is an actual lighthouse on Martha's Vineyard where the filming took place. Because of the billboard in the scene, the lighthouse had to be "moved" with special effects in postproduction

Can anyone explain to me what this actually means?
Because it doesn't explain anything!

Why would the lighthouse have to be "moved" just because
there's a billboard in the scene? And there were no
digital effects in those days, so how did special effects
in post-production move it?

 

Keep in mind that IMdB is not always accurate.

 

THE INTERNET LIED TO ME?!?!

 

Next up ... my second favorite movie of the '70s:



Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1975) starring Richard Dreyfuss.

[image=http://www.thedeathzone.free-online.co.uk/backdrops/misc/fi03.jpg]

When I refer to something as "Spielbergian", I am usually thinking of this movie. To me it's everything that defines vintage Spielberg--that mystical, magical, sense of wonder. It's that fairy tale element that's present in many of his films.

On a related note, in the earliest cut of the film, "When You Wish Upon a Star" was played at the end as Roy (Dreyfuss) enters the mothership. Spielberg took it out after audiences responded poorly to it. The movie made them believe everything that was happened, and that song turned it into a fantasy.

I am currently working on a movie to be sent to Sundance that was inspired by the opening scene of the discovery in this movie. As a whole, it's mostly unrelated. That opening is such a hook, however, and from that point on it just sucks you in. It's that sense of mystique, and when we finally see the aliens at the end it's just... magic.

Also notice the deliberate contrasts between Roy Neary of Close Encounters and Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) of War of the Worlds. Their archs are completely opposite as is the tone of the movie, and obviously the portrayal of the aliens. Whereas Roy essentially abandons his family, Ray begins to care more about his family than himself. Spielberg said in an interview that had he been a father at the time he wrote Close Encounters, that ending with Roy leaving on the mothership would never have happened.


Anyway, that's enough from me. Discuss.

 

I like the score better than the film; I think the usage of When you Wish Upon a Star is the best bit in the whole movie . . .

With one exception. The film as a whole did not grab me, but the dialogue scene where the ship and the ground crew communicate with musical notes is just jaw dropping cinema. And music for that matter.

 

Good thread (and post) but just a mite correction, StarDude, CE3K came out in '77. The same year as Star Wars. In fact Lucas was upset that Williams was also scoring Close Encounters because he was afraid Williams couldn't work on the score to SW.

Yeah, anyways, Close Encounters is an absolute classic film. Its full of great performances, memorable images and a moving score. The final climax is especially terrific.

It reminds me that I should go buy the film one of these days.