Steven Spielberg thinks John Ford is the only perfect filmmaker: “I’ve been laughed at for that”
Despite being the single most commercially successful director in cinema history, some people don’t care, and never have, for Steven Spielberg and his filmography, jam-packed full of classics.
His detractors call him too schmaltzy, too sentimental, and too guilty of pandering to the audience, and while all of those criticisms are true to a certain extent, you don’t become the only director to ever amass a $10 billion filmography without knowing how to put your finger on the pulse of the filmgoing public.
Like anyone who’s ever picked up a megaphone, Spielberg has been guilty of some disappointing, mediocre, and terrible features, but the good drastically outweighs the bad when he can call upon Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Saving Private Ryan, and more.
He’s not perfect, nor would he claim to be. Only an auteur with an ego the size of Hollywood would dare call themselves the best in the business, something Quentin Tarantino has been found guilty of doing; even fewer would call themselves the best of all time, and only the bravest soul would say their contributions to cinema have been the embodiment of onscreen perfection.
Of course, Spielberg is far too modest ever to slather himself in such superlatives, but there is one person he would. His signature filmmaking style was born from a number of influences that span from Akira Kurosawa and David Lean to Stanley Kubrick and John Frankenheimer, but it wasn’t any of them.
Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is his favourite movie of all time, but it’s The Searchers that he watches before he begins a new production. With that in mind, not to mention his obvious influence over everything Spielberg touches, there shouldn’t be any prizes for guessing who he called cinema’s sole perfect director.
“John Ford, technically, was, for me, the perfect filmmaker and Orson Welles was second,” he told David Halpern all the way back in 1974, before Jaws had even finished shooting. “I only put Ford in front of Welles as a technician, as a great technician, although I’ve been yelled at and laughed at for that.”
It’s a shock that Lean doesn’t even make the top two, and Spielberg even felt the need to explain why the mastermind behind Citizen Kane took the runner-up spot behind the eye patch-wearing curmudgeon who redefined the big-screen western several times over and became John Wayne’s closest collaborator.
In terms of pure, unadulterated style, Ford wouldn’t be at the top of most lists. However, his shot composition was second-to-none, and the most important thing Spielberg stole from him was economy: “If he’s taught me anything at all, he’s taught me how to hold back. I mean, Ford was so judicious about his closeups and his wide shots.”
He’s far from the first, or last, high-profile director to salute Ford as being a towering inspiration, but “perfect” is a big word. There’s probably no such thing, but as far as Spielberg can see, Welles was Ford’s closest competitor for being a completely flawless filmmaker.
