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主题电影月—史蒂文.斯皮尔伯格





影奇才史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格


Born: Dec 18, 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio

Occupation: Director, Actor

Active: 80s-2000s

Major Genres: Science Fiction, Drama

Career Highlights: Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, E.T.
The Extra-Terrestrial



    Spielberg began his career as a television director, admired for his
understanding portrayal of human character. His film Jaws《大白鲨》(1975) was
the first to earn more than $100 million, a record he surpassed (超过)first
with E.T.《外星人》(1983) and then with Jurassic Park《侏罗纪公园》(1993),
which grossed(总额达) more than $900 million. Spielberg's love of older movies was
demonstrated with his serial-inspired trilogy(三部曲)of movies featuring Indiana
Jones
《夺宝奇兵》. Other films, many based on literary works, include The Color
Purple
《紫色》 (1985), Empire of the Sun《太阳帝国》(1987), and the
widely acclaimed Holocaust(大屠杀)drama Schindler's List《辛德勒的名单》(1993), for
which he won an Academy Award(奥斯卡金像奖). In 1994, Spielberg, former Disney
executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and recording industry mogul(显要人物) David Geffen
formed Dreamworks SKG(梦工厂), a movie studio and entertainment company.

    
      The director later explored a slave revolt and trial in
Amistad《断锁怒潮》(1997) and won his second Oscar for the realistic World War
II drama Saving Private Ryan《拯救大兵莱恩》(1998). He subsequently examined a
ghastly(可怕的)future world of neurotic(精神病患者的)humans and sentient(有感情的)robots (the
result of a collaboration with Stanley Kubrick) in A.I.《人工智能》(2001), for
which he also wrote the screenplay, and portrayed another dark future in which
crime is detected and stopped before it is committed in the allegory-thriller
Minority Report《少数派报告》(2002). He turned to a lighter, more comic vision
in his tales of a young imposter《冒名顶替者》and his implacable(难缓和的)pursuer in
Catch Me If You Can《猫鼠游戏》(2002) and a foreigner stranded(进退两难) in New
York's Kennedy Airport in The Terminal《幸福终点站》(2004).
Munich
《慕尼黑》(2005) is a tale of Israelis and Palestinians, and terrorism and
vengeance(复仇). By the early 21st cent., Spielberg was Hollywood's most famous,
influential, and successful mainstream director.



    He has won four Academy Awards(奥斯卡奖)(including an Irving G. Thalberg
Memorial Award). He has been nominated for six Academy Awards for Best Director,
winning two of them (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan),
and seven of the films he directed were up for the Best Picture Oscar
(Schindler's List won).



    Spielberg ranks among the most successful filmmakers in history, in
terms of both critical acclaim and popular success even though his films are
sometimes portrayed as the archetype(原型)of modern Hollywood
blockbuster(票房大片)film-making (commercialism over artistic purposes) by critics.
First coming to attention directing adventure films, in later years he has
tackled emotionally powerful issues, such as the Holocaust, slavery, war, and
recently terrorism.



Jaws(1975)

A Great White Shark decides to make the small beach resort town of Amity
his private feeding grounds. This greatly frustrates the town police chief who
wants to close the beaches to chase the shark away. He is thwarted(阻碍)in his
efforts by the town's mayor who finally relents(变温和)when nothing else seems to
work and the chief, a scientist, and an old fisherman with revenge on his mind
take to the sea to kill the beast.


Indiana Jones《夺宝奇兵》

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Indiana Jones 4 (2008)


E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial《外星人》(1982)

Both a classic movie for kids and a remarkable portrait of childhood, E.T.
is a sci-fi adventure that captures that strange moment in youth when the world
is a place of mysterious possibilities (some wonderful, some awful), and the
universe seems somehow separate from the one inhabited by grown-ups. Henry
Thomas plays Elliott, a young boy living with his single mother (Dee Wallace),
his older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton), and his younger sister Gertie
(Drew Barrymore). Elliott often seems lonely and out of sorts, lost in his own
world. One day, while looking for something in the back yard, he senses
something mysterious in the woods watching him. And he's right: an alien
spacecraft on a scientific mission mistakenly left behind an aging
botanist(植物学家) who isn't sure how to get home. Eventually Elliott puts his fears
aside and makes contact with the "little squashy(湿软的易碎的) guy," perhaps the least
threatening alien invader ever to hit a movie screen. As Elliott tries to keep
the alien under wraps (包裹)and help him figure out a way to get home, he
discovers that the creature can communicate with him telepathically(心灵感应地). Soon
they begin to learn from each other, and Elliott becomes braver and less
threatened by life. E.T. rigs up(装配) a communication device from junk he finds
around the house, but no one knows if he'll be rescued before a group of
government scientists gets hold of him. In 2002, Steven Spielberg re-released
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in a revised edition, with several deleted
scenes restored and digitally refurbished(刷新的) special effects. ~ Mark Deming,
All Movie Guide


Jurassic Park 《侏罗纪公园》(1993)

John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has developed a dinosaur(恐龙)park (in a
very remote Island) using a DNA of a prehistoric dinosaur taken from an ancient
insect. In a tour that Hammond makes to a selected audience which suppose to
decide whether the park is safe or not safe for public, the security system
collapsed, and the dinosaurs set themselves free. Now the selected audience, in
the leadership of Doctor Grant (Sam Neil) and include Doctor Malcolm, Doctor
Sattler, Hammond's grandchildren, and some more has to survive in the
Island.


Schindler's List《辛德勒的名单》(1993)
Oskar
Schindler is a vain, glorious and greedy German businessman who becomes unlikely
humanitarian(人道主义者)amid the barbaric(野蛮的) Nazi reign when he feels compelled to
turn his factory into a refuge(避难所) for Jews. Based on the true story of Oskar
Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz
concentration camp(集中营).


A.I.(人工智能)(2001)

In the not-so-far future the polar ice caps have melted and the resulting
raise of the ocean waters has drowned all the coastal cities of the world.
Withdrawn to the interior of the continents, the human race keeps advancing,
reaching to the point of creating realistic robots (called mechas) to serve him.
One of the mecha-producing companies builds David, an artificial kid which is
the first to have real feelings, especially a never-ending love for his
"mother", Monica. Monica is the woman who adopted (收养)him as a substitute for
her real son, who remains in cryo-stasis, stricken by an incurable disease.
David is living happily with Monica and her husband, but when their real son
returns home after a cure is discovered, his life changes dramatically. A
futuristic adaptation of the tale of Pinocchio, with David being the
"fake" boy who desperately wants to become "real".


Catch Me If You Can《猫鼠游戏》(2002)

An FBI agent tracks down and catches a young con artist who successfully
impersonated(模仿)an airline pilot, doctor, assistant attorney general(大律师)and
history professor, cashing more than $2.5 million in fraudulent (欺诈)checks in 26
countries.


Minority Report《少数派报告》(2002)

Based on a Philip K. Dick short story, Minority Report is about a
cop(警察) in the future working in a division of the police department that
arrests killers before they commit the crimes courtesy of some future viewing
technology. Cruise's character has the tables turned on him when he is accused
of a future crime and must find out what brought it about and stop it before it
can happen


Munich《慕尼黑》(2005)

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken
hostage(人质)and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black
September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits(征募)a group of Mossad
agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.



Themes


    Spielberg's films often deal with several recurring themes. Most of his
films deal with ordinary characters searching for or coming in contact with
extraordinary beings or finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances, this
is especially evident in Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind
, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun,
Hook《虎克船长》, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me
If You Can
, War of the Worlds, Munich.

   One consistent theme in his family-friendly work is a childlike, even
naïve, sense of wonder and faith, as attested by works such as Close
Encounters of the Third Kind
, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook
and A.I..

    The other theme is that of loss of innocence and coming-of-age. In
Empire of the Sun, Jim, a well-groomed and spoilt English youth, loses
his innocence as he suffers through World War II Japan. Similarly in Catch Me
If You Can
Frank naively and foolishly believes that he can reclaim his
shattered family if he accumulates enough money to support them.


    The most persistent theme throughout his film is tension between
parent-child relationships. Parents (often fathers) are reluctant, absent or
ignorant. Peter Banning in Hook starts off in the beginning of the film
as a reluctant married-to-his-work parent who through the course of his film
regains the respect of his children. The notable absence of Elliott's father
in E.T., is the most famous example of this theme. Even Oskar Schindler,
from Schindler's List, is reluctant to have a child with his wife.
Munich depicts Avner as man away from his wife and newborn daughter.
There are of course exceptions; Brody in Jaws is a committed family man,
while John Anderton in Minority Report is a shattered man after the
disappearance of his son. This theme is arguably the most autobiographical
aspect of Spielberg's films, since Spielberg himself was affected by his
parents' divorce as a child.


    Another aspect of Spielberg's films and possibly the one most
frequently criticized is that most of his films are generally optimistic in
nature. Critics often accuse his films for being overly sentimental. There are
exceptions, his debut feature The Sugarland Express has a downbeat ending
where Ila Fae loses custody of her daughter and most recently A.I. where
David never receives acceptance from his real mother.


    His 21st century output from A.I. to Munich are considerably
bleaker in tone with respect to his earlier films. In A.I., David is
shunned and rejected by his family and indeed most of the world at large and
ultimately never earns the love of his real mother. The crime-caper, Catch Me
If You Can
, with a certain irony when Frank, who continuously rebels against
authority figures throughout the film, becomes part of the very system he fought
against; while War of the Worlds was the first time Spielberg attempted
to show evil aliens. Munich, his latest and most controversial film, is
also his most ambiguous, as in the end it's uncertain whether the cycle of
violence would ever truly end.