Eight memorable films from one of the most acclaimed directors in cinema history come together for the first time ever in the Steven Spielberg Director’s Collection Blu-ray box set to be released on the 24th October by Universal Studios Home Entertainment.
The package includes a treasure trove of extras like a 58-page book on the visionary director’s career, featuring rare photos, archival materials, hours of bonus features with making-of documentaries, behind the scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, archival footage and interviews with Spielberg himself.
Since beginning his long and distinguished career on the Universal backlot more than forty years ago, Spielberg has gone on to direct an unprecedented number of some of the biggest box office hits and critically-acclaimed films in cinematic history.
The Spielberg Director’s Collection showcases some of the most unforgettable movies the three-time Oscar-winner made for Universal – The Sugarland Express (1974), Jaws (1975), 1941 (1979), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Always (1989), Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World (1997) – plus his debut film Duel (1971) which has been digitally remastered and restored.
In these days of multi-million dollar flops and rumours of the imminent decline and fall of Hollywood, Steven Spielberg is sometimes mentioned as a saviour of the film industry. While others turn out monumental turkeys, almost everything Spielberg touches breaks all previous box office records.
From 1975 to 1985 he directed and/or produced eighteen films, including eight of the highest-grossing motion pictures of all-time: Jaws (1975), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984) and Back To The Future (1985).
He’s had his flops too, and yet he’s been hailed as a latter-day Disney, another Irving Thalberg, a Sam Goldwyn-type who can talk straight. Actually, he’s more like the Ronald McDonald of movies, a chap who’s able to take the same old basic ingredients and make them palatable to an enormous number of people.
Spielberg’s name came to public notice in a modest way with his first feature Duel (1971) which was made for American television and broadcast in November 1971. It was not his first professional work, however. He had tried to enter the film school at the University
of Southern California on the basis of amateur movies he had made, including his two-hour-long science fiction film Firelight. He failed. They had accepted George Lucas, John Milius, and were about to accept John Carpenter, but they would not take young Spielberg.
Eventually, at the age of 21, after haunting the lot at Universal Studios and making a 35mm documentary about hitchhiking called Amblin’ he was given a job as one of three directors making a television pilot for a new series called Night Gallery.
In 1971 he had seven separate episodes for various television series broadcast, but Duel – which was an actual full-length movie and not just an episode of something – was what caught people’s eyes. There was no immediate excitement – although Duel was well received by both critics and audiences alike, it was not until 1973 that it gained release as a cinema film in Europe and Australia with added footage, increasing its duration from 74 minutes to 90 minutes. That was when it started winning festival prizes and rave reviews, and suddenly Spielberg’s career really took off.
Spielberg made two more feature-length movies for television: Something Evil (1972), about the possession of a young girl, and Savage (1973) was a run-of-the-mill private eye story. Both were competent, neither was extraordinary, and neither received cinema release. But after the overseas success of Duel, he was given a cinema feature to direct: Sugarland Express (1974) starring Goldie Hawn and William Atherton as the jailbird couple on the run in an effort to save their baby boy from being adopted. Well-made and sentimental, it quietly sank out of sight due to poor promotion. Next on Spielberg’s ‘To Do’ list was the box-office record-breaker Jaws (1975) and the rest, as they say, is history.
Spielberg’s biggest hits remain those that tell of unearthly wonders from a child’s point of view – like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial – or at least from the point of view of the child within – like Jurassic Park (1993). When he tries to break out of this familiar formula, he is usually criticised for doing so. For instance, his first attempt at a non-fantastic film resulted in The Colour Purple (1985) which was accused of sanitising Alice Walker’s original novel and deemed a failure by many critics. But when Spielberg works within the formula, he has unparalleled success, and almost single-handedly given Hollywood’s special effects industry a huge boost.
His undeniable technical expertise, allied with his instinct for mythologies that keep their power in a secular world, has already worked miracles both commercially and aesthetically.
It would be no surprise at all if his future accomplishments were even greater than those in the past, for he is a thoughtful and talented filmmaker, and true to his own vision.
For the Guide, I have put together reviews of three of the films featured in the collection: JURASSIC PARK, ET and DUEL which you can find by using the search facility on the site.