Spielberg's 10 Best Movies

A List of the Greatest Films in Director Steven Spielberg's Career

Sep 30, 2009

Steven Spielberg. arguably the greatest ever film director, has made movies that have shaped the industry forever. Here's what are possibly his 10 best.

Although made for television, it was a movie that bore all the hallmarks of director destined for a movie career. With Hitchcockian suspense throughout and a primal leviathan - in the shape of a big black truck - preying relentlessly upon poor, unsuspecting Dennis Weaver, Duel was the natural pre-cursor to a certain aquatic terror movie in 1975. Despite low production values and containing only one character, Duel demonstrated Spielberg’s ability to bleed tension from the directorial bread and butter of intelligent shot selection and an intense editing.

From one end of Spielberg’s career to the other, the gulf in budget could not be greater between films 9 and 10 on this list. But therein lays the secret to Steven Spielberg’s longevity. The special effects in sci-fi Minority Report complement the storyline rather than replace it, something which many a modern day Hollywood production seem to have forgotten.

James Graham, a privileged young British aristocrat has his life turned upside down when Japanese troops invade China during World War II. The film gave Christian Bale his breakthrough at the tender age of 13 and is very much an underrated Spielberg classic. Life as a prisoner of war is told brilliantly through Jim Graham’s naïve childhood eyes whilst alone amidst a world of adults, to whom survival is their only priority. Empire of the Sun is one of the most touching Spielberg movies.

Anyone who questions Spielberg’s versatility may want to note that 1993 saw the director take on Jurassic Park – the year’s biggest blockbuster – and Schindler’s List – the year’s biggest Oscar winner, all the more impressive when the polarised subject matter is taken into consideration. The dinosaurs in the film were a masterstroke in CGI at a time when the special effects industry was going through a transitional period. It’s testament to the attention to detail that those dinosaurs still seem just as real, some 16 years on.

1977 saw the sci-fi movie make a bit of resurgence, and while George Lucas stole most of the spoils with Star Wars, the personal story of one man’s obsession with a vision presented to him after an alien encounter, made Close Encounters resonate heavily with audiences. Avoiding the cliché sci-fi themes of alien invasion and mass warfare, the film contains an ending that most Hollywood execs nowadays wouldn’t have the guts to permit.

An adventure film with action scenes that have been copied and parodied a hundred times. Be it a giant rolling boulder, the shooting a samurai sword-wielding Arab or a soldier chopped to bits in an aeroplane propeller, every scene is recognisable. As Spielberg himself admits, the only character he’s ever brought to the screen that can be identified by just a silhouette is Dr. Henry Jones Jnr., such is the iconography of the Indiana Jones movies. With villainous Nazi’s, bucket loads of snakes and spiders, and a screaming damsel in tow, the Indy films wrote the book on action-adventure stereotypes.

Following Raiders, E.T. is probably the film that cemented Spielberg’s reputation as a family entertainer in the 80’s. Many regard this as his signature film, although his more profound films of the 90’s deserve preference. E.T. reiterated Spielberg’s view that aliens weren’t all hostile xenomorphs, instead opting for a personal story of friendship between a teenage boy, Elliot, and an extra terrestrial stranded on Earth. Spielberg’s inspiration for Elliot’s disillusionment with the world came from his own experience of his parent’s divorce. The theme of two lost souls finding friendship in each other belied its superficial popcorn-fodder exterior and brought a generation to tears.

Spielberg’s breakthrough movie. This seminal blockbuster defined how the summer movie market would be shaped for decades to come. Jaws is often, rather stupidly, belittled for its now archaic mechanical shark. But how many of those critics would take a dip in the ocean after watching the movie? Not many. Jaws was the case of many creative minds coming together in the right place at the right time. The screenplay is exemplary, with Brody’s formulaic character arc holding the film together with superb supporting roles from Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw (who could forget that speech?). The final act of the movie - with the three actors alone on The Orca - is as much a story about three feuding characters as the bid to catch the great white shark itself. Spielberg’s mastery in leaving the shark relatively shrouded until the final scenes of the film serves to create a sense of tension yet to be matched on celluloid… And then there’s John Williams’ music.

Graphic. Shocking. Emotional. A movie that single-handedly changed the way war movies were made. The vast majority of subsequent films have, in some way, borrowed from Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg holds the compliment received from D-Day veterans - that he had accurately recreated their memories of Omaha Beach - as the greatest compliment of his career. The opening 20 minutes of this film is one of the finest pieces of film direction in the history of the moving image, and the rest of the movie isn’t bad either! Spielberg duly won his 2nd Oscar for achievement in directing.

The true story of German businessman Oskar Schindler, who saved hundreds of Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz during WW II. This provided Spielberg’s first Oscar for both director and best film. Shot in black and white, the harrowing experiences of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz are cast against the personal story of Schindler, an entrepreneur whose intentions to profit from the war are soon put into perspective after witnessing the atrocities carried out by the Nazi’s. Schindler’s journey is told poignantly and performed brilliantly by a stellar cast. Probably the film that brought the holocaust’s brutality firmly into everyone’s living rooms.

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