Empire of Dreams: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of Steven Spielberg

Empire of Dreams: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of Steven Spielberg

Language: English

Pages: 302

ISBN: 074255578X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Empire of Dreams is the first definitive look at all of the science fiction (S.F.), fantasy, and horror films directed by Steven Spielberg, one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the world today. In the 1970s and 1980s, along with George Lucas, Spielberg helped spark the renaissance of American SF and fantasy film, and he has remained highly productive and prominent in these genres ever since. S.F., fantasy, and horror films form the bulk of his work for over thirty years; of the twenty-six theatrical features he directed from 1971 to 2005, sixteen are of these genres, a coherent and impressive body of work. His films have become part of a global consciousness and his cinematic style part of the visual vocabulary of world media.

Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited

Houses of Noir: Dark Visions from Thirteen Film Studios

The American Cinema

Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadows of War

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

father or father figure trying to rescue a child just before it undergoes the death the father has unwittingly devised for it,” as in Jaws, Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, Hook, or Schindler’s List (Sheehan 10). The nameless child in this scene is odd in another way: aside from there being no explanation for his presence, he is funny-looking and androgynous, as well as fat and obnoxious, so that he resembles the greedy Nedry, as if to justify the sadism of Grant’s attack. Later, after Grant

situation. Both Duel and Jaws justify the hero’s fears by grounding them in real dangers. Mann is being pursued by a killer truck and Brody has good reason to be afraid of the water because of the shark. Nevertheless, Mann was profoundly insecure before the encounter with the truck, and Brody’s hydrophobia preceded the arrival of the shark. The two men are fearful not so much because of the menace; instead, the menace is tailor-made to fit their fears. The truck could be said to erupt out of

emotional attitudes: “on the one hand, ‘sacred,’ ‘consecrated,’ and on the other, ‘uncanny,’ ‘dangerous,’ ‘forbidden,’ ‘unclean’” (18). He explains the prohibitions of taboo as stemming from emotional ambivalence: the desire to commit the oedipal crime yet the fear of doing so. Thus the taboo combines “veneration and horror” (25). The golden idol in the South American temple is an object of worship, yet it is also horrendous, made almost unreachable through a series of elaborate, lethal booby

with added footage—four additional scenes—to bring it to ninety minutes, and it won prizes at several European film festivals but was not released in American theaters until 1983. It has since earned a cult following through cable showings and videotape. So, although Duel was originally shot for television, it can be considered Spielberg’s first theatrical feature. In 1971, the TV movie was a relatively new form, so there was room to experiment. Duel was made for $450,000 and shot in two weeks

back to the Spanish conquistadors. Indy as archaeological swashbuckler becomes part of that imperial, patriarchal lineage. Peter Biskind notes, “The suggestive proximity of Cross, snake, and private part makes explicit what the two previous films had only implied: the power of the coveted object of the quest, be it Ark, Ankara Stone [sic], Cross of Coronado, or Holy Grail, is the power of the phallus, or, better yet, dad’s phallus” (Biskind 134). The most significant betrayal of Indy by a male

Download sample

Download

About admin