The first movie Steven Spielberg ever made
It’s hard to think of a Hollywood landscape without Steven Spielberg. Throughout his career, Spielberg has given the film world every slice of emotion a director can muster, from emotional dramas like Schindler’s List to action-adventure movies like the Indiana Jones franchise. Before he had started working on any of his classics, Spielberg was still a humble filmmaker looking for his first big break.
Before working on his epics, Spielberg’s initial movies were passion projects put together as a child. Since he could never get the big-budget actors required for dramas, the acclaimed director worked with what he had when he was still in his teens.
Long before he served as a producer on the film Duel, Firelight was the first film to bear Spielberg’s name. Set in modern times, the 1964 film follows a group of people as they come across what they think to be a UFO. After seeing various objects in the sky, they see people vanishing in their town.
Coming from the same man who would redefine cinema, the plot does bare a few similarities to the extra-terrestrial sides of his work. Compared to his future classics, Close Encounters of The Third Kind practically serves as a professional version of what Spielberg was looking to do in his first film.
That ambition didn’t exactly translate into any success, though. With no studio behind it, the 17-year-old director had to hire actors from around his neighbourhood to play the different roles. Since there was no wardrobe department to speak of, the aliens in the film weren’t even in any set costume, only cloaked in shadow when they were introduced in the film.
Airing the movie in his hometown theatre, Spielberg admitted that the profits weren’t exactly luxurious either, telling Inside the Actor’s Studio, “I counted the receipts that night, and we charged a dollar a ticket. Five hundred people came to the movie, and I think somebody probably paid two dollars because we made one dollar profit that night, and that was it.”
While there has been little known about the final product, the way Spielberg describes it bares a striking similarity to the way he portrayed his filmmaking style in The Fablemans. Coming from a genuine love for the medium, it’s easy to picture Spielberg as the young kid with the same twinkle in his eye portrayed by Gabriel LaBelle, being just as excited at getting standard shots as he was with getting the moments that people would remember long after they had left the theatre.
After gaining further experience working on his passion projects, Spielberg’s work would eventually bring him to the small screen, directing select episodes of shows such as Night Gallery and Columbo before getting the call to work on Duel. Just four years after having his first big-budget film, he would be creating Jaws, which sent him on a hot streak that included the most celebrated movies in almost every genre, from war epics like Saving Private Ryan to historical dramas like Lincoln. The budgets may have gotten bigger, but Spielberg has always remained that same kid with a love for making movies.
