1.Passage 2
Steven Spielberg’s first films were made at a time when directors were the most important people in Hollywood, and his more recent ones at a time when marketing controls the industry. He has remained the most powerful filmmaker in the world during both periods, which says something for his talent and his flexibility.
Spielberg’s most important contribution to modem movies is his acute insight to find and attract a large audience. He ingeniously revised old-style B-movie stories with A-level craftsmanship and enhanced them with the latest developments in special effects.
Considering such movies as the "Indiana Jones" series and "Jurassic Park". The story lines were the mediocre stuff, but the filmmaking was cutting edge and delivered what films have always desired: they showed us something amazing that we hadn’t seen before.
The master image created in movies expresses something fundamental about the way the filmmakers see things. Spielberg once said that his master image was a simultaneous combination of brightness and mystery. This appears in many of his films.
In Spielberg, the light source conceals mystery, whereas for many other directors it is darkness that conceals mystery. The difference is that for Spielberg, mystery offers promise instead of threat. One day he talked about a previous experience.
"My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid," he said, "and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn’t know what he wanted to do. He wouldn’t tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw ail these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky. And my dad spread out a blanket. We lay down and looked at the sky, and I saw for the first time all these meteors."
"What scared me was being awakened in the middle of the night and taken somewhere without being told where. But what didn’t scare me, but was very soothing, was watching this meteor shower. And I think from that moment on, I never looked at the sky and thought it was a bad place."
Spielberg has always maintained superb quality control and when his films work, they work on every level that a film can roach. When his films are shown, they will conquer the most sophisticated filmgoers in the world and invite them to tears and cheers.
