The painting Steven Spielberg consults before directing a movie
Legendary director Steven Spielberg has inspired countless filmmakers who harbour aspirations of making a blockbuster cinematic hit that pulls at the heartstrings. Spielberg has delivered consistently emotional narratives with immense set pieces that have woven themselves into the very fabric of movie history.
But Spielberg has his own influences too. The director has previously admitted that he was most inspired by the likes of Walt Disney, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Curtiz and David Lean, all true stalwarts of the industry. But outside of cinema, Spielberg has previously noted other areas of art as his biggest inspiration.
The painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell, whose works were championed for reflecting on American culture through the middle part of the 20th century, has a lasting impact on Spielberg. The filmmaker has previously gone on record to express his admiration for Rockwell and explain how he influenced his own style.
“He did his storytelling in a flash; he did it with a single image,” Spielberg once said. “And he invites you to explore that image. He draws you into that image, and he invites you, once it makes an impression on you, to question why, simply question why.”
But when it comes to a particular painting of Rockwell’s, there appears to be no other favourite in Spielberg’s eyes than the 1947 work ‘Boy On High Dive’, which depicts a young male child crouched at the end of a high diving board, looking out with fear over its edge at the pool far below him.
Asked whether the painting was indeed Spielberg’s favourite, he replied: “Well, let’s put it this way: This is the Rockwell that, every time I’m ready to make a movie, every time I’m ready to commit to direct a movie, that’s me – that’s the feeling in my gut before I say ‘yes’ to a picture. Because every movie is like looking off a three-meter diving board, every one.”
“For me, that painting represents every motion picture just before I commit to directing it,” he added. “That painting spoke to me the second I saw it… I said not only is that going in my collection, but it’s going in my office so I can look at it every day of my life.”
Spielberg himself has committed several works to the history of American culture, but it appears that we might not have got as many of them, nor with such high quality, were it not for the famous American painter. So every time we watch a Spielberg classic, we ought to thank Norman Rockwell too.
