The movie Steven Spielberg always watches before making an adventure film: “The perfect picture”
Steven Spielberg isn’t just a fantastic director with multiple awards, a mountain of box office ticket sales, and a legacy that is perhaps the most robust in cinema history; he is also a dedicated and devoted lover of movies.
The Jaws director has been resolute in his appreciation for the skill and dexterity shown by the filmmakers of the golden age of Hollywood. Only in his semi-autobiographical piece The Fabelmans did Spielberg pay tribute to John Ford, with whom the then-amateur filmmaker enjoyed a genuine and enlightening conversation. Elsewhere, Spielberg has praised other filmmakers such as David Lean and Martin Scorsese. The truth is, if you cut Spielberg, the man bleeds celluloid.
It has been crucial to his success as a filmmaker. In addition to being able to enact his vision on the screen, he has a clear idea of what can excite and entice an audience—the moments that can make them cry, laugh, be jubilant, or be incandescent with rage. This has helped him become a uniquely positioned visual storyteller and has made him one of the most successful in the business.
Perhaps his most successful area of interest is in adventure movies. Saving Private Ryan, the ‘Indiana Jones’ series, Jurassic Park, ET The Extra-Terrestrial, War Horse and even Ready Player One are all soaked in the notion of adventure. Of beginning a journey without knowing exactly how it might all play out and the sincere highs, lows and moments in between that come with it. These are movies in which Spielberg hangs his slightly sweaty hat.
But before he begins any such project, Spielberg needs inspiration, so he settles down to watch one particular movie, which gives him the impetus and influence he needs to complete the picture. It comes back to one of his favourite directors of all time, David Lean and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Speaking with AFI, Spielberg noted of its importance: “[The Bridge on the River Kwai] is a film I will see before I make a picture. Maybe not Schindler’s List, I don’t believe I saw it, but when I made my Raiders of the Lost Ark films, my Indiana Jones films, anything that has a lot of scope and is somewhat of an adventure, I will always run Bridge”.
But why does the movie resonate so deeply with Spielberg, quite simply, the story: “One of the reasons is for that last scene. Just the choreography, where everybody is, you know it’s the culmination of all these arrows that have all rendezvoused in the same place, and they wire the bridge while the British were — with coconut braziers — putting on a fop show. My god, all these things are happening, and as a kid, I am being dazzled by all these stories. Balancing four stories?”
This tightrope walk was enough inspiration for Spielberg to not only watch it before every adventure movie he ever makes but also to give it a incredible label: “The juggling these four stories and each one is on a collision course with that bridge, which is, my god, the name of the darn movie! That’s the perfect picture. One of the most perfect movies ever made”
