5. “Schindler’s List” (1993)
Having famously offered the project to Roman Polanski, Sydney Pollack and Martin Scorsese because he wasn’t sure he could do it justice, Spielberg finally took the reins on his adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s “Schindler’s Ark” himself. The result: 7 Oscars and over $320 million at the box office —an incredible achievement for a black-and-white, 3-hour-plus harrowing Holocaust movie released in the middle of December. Though that famous quote from ever-stern Stanley Kubrick (“the Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. Schindler’s List is about 600 who don’t”) has haunted the film a little, mostly Spielberg proved the doubters wrong (not least himself) by making a serious-minded, largely uncompromising and sincerely felt story of utter moral apocalypse. Powerfully moving and marked by extraordinary performances (especially from breakout Ralph Fiennes), “Schindler’s List” is not just a document of a specific moment, nor is it just about Oskar Schindler’s (Liam Neeson) “success” at saving some lives amid massive catastrophic failure. Instead, it is a compellingly presented case for the defense of the belief that humanity can survive the most horrific circumstances, and that the act of remembering as acutely and as honestly as you can is also an act of honoring.
4. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)
In recent years, Spielberg has said that he never would have stuck to the ending of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” if he made the film today. And watching it now, the sight of formerly loving husband and father Richard Dreyfuss boarding that extraterrestrial craft, leaving behind all of his earthly responsibilities, is shockingly un-Spielbergian. But it’s also the fulfillment of a character arc, a justification of all the batty stuff he did in the previous two hours, and a testament the epic nature of the event: it remains one of his most emotionally fulfilling movies because of that ending. ‘Close Encounters’ is novelistic both in its epic scope and its tangential plot elements (like François Truffaut‘s French investigator), but it also fits snugly into the sub-genre of “average dude being overtaken by an otherworldly obsession,” which more recent films like Spielberg protégé David Koepp‘s “Stir of Echoes” and Jeff Nichols‘ “Take Shelter” and “Midnight Special” have explored. We can credit ‘Close Encounters’ with so much influence and so much unearthly wonder, but we should also blame it for popularizing the archetypal glassy-eyed grey alien, which every crackpot ever since has claimed mutilated their cattle and probed them anally.
3. “E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial” (1982)
While his populist films traditionally appeal to all ages, “The BFG” arguably marks only the third time that Spielberg has made a film specifically aimed at younger audiences. The last was “The Adventures of Tintin,” and the first was “E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial.” Derived from a much darker horror-tinged project by John Sayles, it was passed on by Columbia, who called it “a wimpy Disney movie,” only to became the highest-grossing film of all time up to that point. It’s the simple tale of a boy and his new best friend: Elliott (Henry Thomas)’s pal is an intensely lovable alien stranded on Earth. It’s a true coming-of-age tale —Elliott gets drunk and kisses a girl— but there’s real pain, both in the classically Spielbergian fatherless family unit, and the utterly devastating climax. ‘E.T.’ holds up amazingly well to this day, and there simply will never come a time when the image of Elliot’s bike soaring above the trees fails to make hearts sing. It’s certainly the director’s first truly sentimental film (far more so than the more cerebral ‘Close Encounters‘), but it’s proof that, when it works, sentiment can actually fly.
2. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981)
Hot off his first failure with “1941,” Spielberg was hungry for a hit. He needed something great, and recognized it in George Lucas’ old script “The Adventures of Indiana Smith,” a take on the movie serials of the ‘30s and ‘40s that so heavily influenced the two wunderkinds. Spielberg had always longed to make a Bond movie, and with this script, which he described as “a James Bond film without the hardware,” he found something even better and set off to make a quick and dirty picture in the style of those old Saturday matinee serials. What resulted was simply one of the most perfectly paced, tightly scripted, delightfully performed action films ever to that point, a film that has so few illusions about being art that it ends up as incontrovertible art. It’s possibly the most purely entertaining movie made this side of “Star Wars” —we could dance around waving a scimitar trying to describe the genius of ‘Raiders,’ but we’d much rather put a bullet in the argument against this film: this is the film that all Hollywood films want to be. The childhood attachment to ‘E.T.’ is one thing, the sense of eerie awe of ‘Close Encounters’ is another, but just ask yourself honestly: is there anything you’d rather be doing than watching ‘Raiders’?
1. “Jaws” (1975)
If you do not believe that ‘Jaws’ is a perfect film, we can never be friends. Yes, it is largely responsible for the way Hollywood has functioned for 40 years, for the idea of the summer blockbuster which has squeezed out smaller films and which dictates how studios make, distribute and market their “products” today. But you simply cannot stay mad at “Jaws,” no matter how much you may dislike the culture that it spawned: it’s pure narrative cinema that succeeds so phenomenally because it is as lean and pure a hit of storytelling cocaine as has ever been delivered. Thrilling, scary and funny with a killer cast (Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss are all in top form), “Jaws” is one of those rare films that, no matter what scene you come across on TV, you will watch it to the end. Of course, there are the show-stopping spectacle moments, the famously dodgy shark (“Bruce”) who we see so brilliantly little of as a result. But it’s the smaller, more intimate moments that keep it clipping along so compellingly: Chief Brody’s young son mimicking his father at the dinner table; Brody and his wife wanting to “get drunk and fool around”; and of course Shaw delivering one of the most terrifying, enthralling monologues in film history. There had never been anything like “Jaws” before, and for our money, there’s been nothing like it since.
–with Oli Lyttelton, The Playlist Staff