The movie that forced Steven Spielberg into uncharted territory: “I’ve never done anything like that”
One of the most remarkable aspects of Steven Spielberg’s career is the sheer breadth of his work. While many may associate him with family-friendly classics like ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, or The Adventures of Tintin, his filmography spans nearly every genre. Looking for a historical drama? There’s The Color Purple, Amistad, and Schindler’s List. Prefer sci-fi? Spielberg offers Minority Report and Ready Player One. And if Jaws doesn’t quite scratch your horror itch, consider Poltergeist, which he produced and co-wrote for director Tobe Hooper.
It seems like Spielberg really can do it all, which would be really annoying if he were anything but one of the nicest men in film. That being said, there are moments when the legendary director has to try new things, even several decades into his extraordinary career. He found this out when making 2015’s Bridge of Spies, a spy drama with historical elements.
“I’ve never had anything to do with espionage, subterfuge or negotiation,” he told Screen Daily while promoting the film. The story of Bridge of Spies mirrors the real-life incident of Francis Gary Powers, a US pilot shot down over Russia and held captive by the Soviet government during the height of the Cold War. It focuses on James B Donovan (Tom Hanks), the lawyer tasked with securing Powers’ release in exchange for a KGB operative being held in the United States.
“This is my first negotiation movie because that’s what James Donovan did best,” Spielberg continued. “He was a very, very artful negotiator. I’ve never done anything like that before, so I was using muscles I didn’t even know I had.”
When looking for inspiration on how to tackle this subject, the director turned to a classic source of Cold War fiction – Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. “I love the way that film had been photographed,” he said of the movie, which was adapted from John le Carré’s novel of the same name. “It is also one of my favourite Richard Burton performances, the other being Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?.”
Bridge of Spies is set between two very different worlds at a time when the differences between America and the Soviet Union were their most pronounced. To create this split, Spielberg went out of his way to make the movie’s two halves feel separate from one another.
“I also thought it was important to bifurcate the film and make the first half very American and the second half very foreign,” he said. “We did this through lighting, the colour palette, the choices we made in wardrobe, set dressing and art direction, and through Janusz Kaminski’s always brilliant cinematography. I needed the first half to have a really Rockwellian, American feel and the second half to have something that felt very offshore.”
Spielberg had nothing to worry about regarding Kaminski’s work, as the two had been working together since the early 1990s. He shot Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, two of Spielberg’s other wartime dramas, and won ‘Best Cinematography‘ at the Academy Awards for both of them.
All this hard work paid off, as Bridge of Spies made solid returns at the box office and became a critical darling. It was nominated for six Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’. Mark Rylance, who played Russian spy Rudolf Abel, won ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his efforts.
