Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg is known as the most powerful man in New Hollywood and a pioneer of the contemporary blockbuster, America’s most successful export. His career began a new chapter in mass culture. At the same time, American post war liberalism was breaking down. This fascinating new book explains the complex relationship between film and politics through the prism of an iconic filmmaker. Spielberg’s early films were a triumphant emergence of the Sunbelt aesthetic that valued visceral kicks and basic emotions over the ambiguities of history. Such blockbusters have inspired much debate about their negative effect on politics and have been charged as being an expression of the corporatization of life. Here Frederick Wasser argues that the older Spielberg has not fully gone this way, suggesting that the filmmaker recycles the populist vision of older Hollywood because he sincerely believes in both big time moviemaking and liberal democracy. Nonetheless, his stories are burdened by his generation’s hostility to public life, and the book shows how he uses filmmaking tricks to keep his audience with him and to smooth over the ideological contradictions. His audiences have become more global, as his films engage history. This fresh and provocative take on Spielberg in the context of globalization, rampant market capitalism and the hardening socio-political landscape of the United States will be fascinating reading for students of film and for anyone interested in contemporary America and its culture.

Until the first edition of Steven Spielberg: A Biography was published in 1997, much about Spielberg’s personality and the forces that shaped it had remained enigmatic, in large part because of his tendency to obscure and mythologize his own past. But in this first full-scale, in-depth biography of Spielberg, Joseph McBride reveals hidden dimensions of the filmmaker’s personality and shows how deeply personal even his most commercial work has been. This new edition adds four chapters to Spielberg’s life story, chronicling his extraordinarily active and creative period from 1997 to the present, a period in which he has balanced his executive duties as one of the partners in the film studio DreamWorks SKG with a remarkable string of films as a director. Spielberg’s ambitious recent work—including Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, A. I. Artifucial Intelligence, Minority Report, The Terminal and Munich—has continually expanded his range both stylistically and in terms of adventurous, often controversial, subject matter. Steven Spielberg: A Biography brought about a reevaluation of the great filmmaker’s life and work by those who viewed him as merely a facile entertainer. This new edition guides readers through the mature artistry of Spielberg’s later period in which he manages, against considerable odds, to run a successful studio while maintaining and enlarging his high artistic standards as one of America’s most thoughtful, sophisticated, and popular filmmakers.

Spanning 25 years of Spielberg's career, this book explores the issues, themes, and financial considerations surrounding his works. The blockbuster creator of "E.T., Jaws, " and "Schindler's List" talks about dreams and the almighty dollar. Includes 10 film stills, chronology, filmography, and index.

Steven Spielberg is hailed as one of the most influential and commercially successful film directors in motion picture history. Through his role in developing, directing, and driving the special effects of many of the biggest blockbusters in movie history, includingJaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, and Minority Report, Spielberg changed the way movies are made and left an indelible mark on popular culture. This biography traces his rise from shooting films as a shy young boy with the family's 8 mm camera to his first unpaid job at Universal Studios, to the rise of DreamWorks, the studio Spielberg founded and quickly turned into a filmmaking powerhouse. While Spielberg's best work may lie ahead, this compelling biography puts his legendary career and work to date into perspective by offering analysis and commentary from fans and critics alike. Whether about an alien lost in suburbia or the battles of World War II, Spielberg has directed and produced many of the most talked about movies of the past 30 years. Students interested in the history of film and the filmmaking industry will find this biography endlessly fascinating.

Steven Spielberg has changed the cinematic world with his hugely popular films. Testing out new technology, telling dramatic stories and collaborating with successful directors, actors and producers has helped build Spielberg's reputation as a top director and producer.

This volume presents an in-depth discussion of the work of Steven Spielberg, an American director of Jewish origin. It offers a careful study of the audiovisual and documentary material in Spielberg’s filmography, exploring both the biographical and sociological parameters that influence his cinematographic work and his values, and the director’s own personal testimony and critics’ comments on the value of dignity and other subjects prevalent in his work. The book then goes on to analyse the formal elements used by the filmmaker in his work, and his maturity in relation to anthropological matters.

"A biography of film director Steven Spielberg"--Provided by publisher.

Prolific director, writer and producer of such films as Saving Private Ryan, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, Jurassic Park, and others.