Top Ten Spielberg Moments

After nineteen years of waiting, the new Indiana Jones film is finally released this week, which of course means that the new Steven Spielberg film is released too. So, to celebrate the beardy legend‘s twenty-sixth movie, we've decided to dedicate this week's blog to the best bits from Spielberg's iconic oeuvre.

Now, we could fill this with the obvious suggestions: flying bikes, marauding dinosaurs, giant boulders, what have you, but that would be boring and predictable. So instead we're going to try to take a look at the less-celebrated moments from Spielberg's iconic films, not an easy task in a career as well-known as his. Wish us luck...

1) "I thought I'd lost you boy!" (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
Well, Indy had to be at the top didn't he? There are many well-known and not so well-known moments in the Indiana Jones series that could have taken top spot on this list, but for me it had to be this heart-wrenching scene between Indy and father Henry from Last Crusade. After busting his dad out of a marauding Nazi tank, Indy has apparently fallen to his death off the side of a cliff. Henry, Sallah and Marcus Brody peer over the edge hoping for a sign of life, but there’s nothing. All seems lost until Indy hauls himself back on to land and creeps up behind the trio to see what they’re looking at. Henry double takes, grabs his son and, with tears in his eyes, says: "I thought I'd lost you boy!" "I thought you'd lost me too, sir,” comes Indy’s reply. Last Crusade was one of the last times Spielberg told his familiar father-son subtext from the point-of-view of the son. Fittingly, it's one of his best.

2). Truffaut's connection (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
A major part of Spielberg's genius is his ability to imbue seemingly silly stories with the kind of intelligence only peers like Scorsese and Coppolla are attributed with displaying. Close Encounters is his finest example of this. What for some is just a big science-fiction epic with funny little space aliens at the end is really a film about spirituality, the search for meaning and, above all, connection (one of the key themes in any Spielberg film). Nowhere else is this better conveyed than in Francois Truffaut's hand-signal conversation with the aliens in the film‘s closing stages. John Williams's music is, of course, majestic, as is Spielberg's orchestration of the scene, but it’s Truffaut’s acting that really makes the moment fly. The innocent joy on his face perfectly epitomises the wonder of much of Spielberg’s oeuvre.

3). Cadillac of the Sky (Empire of the Sun)
One of Spielberg's most overlooked films, Empire of the Sun finds the director focusing on themes of tolerance (another often-overlooked key idea), communication and respect. Based on JG Ballard's autobiographical novel, it's the story of Jim, a young boy who gets separated from his parents and put in an internment camp after the Japanese attack on Pear Harbour. In the typically Spielbergian way, Jim is obsessed with flying and this forms the basis of the film's best scene. Wandering through an aircraft hanger, Jim spots a Japanese plane and reverently approaches it. A Japanese officer sees him and arms his gun, ready to shoot the boy down. Three pilots arrive and Jim turns round to salutes them. They salute back and the soldier lowers his weapon. The scene then dissolves into a young Japanese boy playing with a toy plane, which he accidentally throws over a gate separating his side of the camp from Jim‘s. Jim picks it up and throws it back. A beautifully understated and too-often overlooked scene from one of Spielberg’s first out-and-out serious pictures.

4). Mary's breakdown (E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial)
Yes, E.T’s teary farewell is one of the most well-known scenes in film history never mind just Spielberg’s oeuvre, but it’s the peripheral action that I’m talking about here. Avert your attention from Elliott and E.T and you find some wonderful grace notes going on in the background with Elliot’s siblings, friends and, above all, his mother. Played by Dee Wallace, Mary is one of the more interesting female characters in Spielberg’s canon (he tends to focus more on men) and her reaction to E.T’s departure is heartbreaking. As her son says goodbye to the most important thing in his life at that moment, she sinks to the floors, tears in her eyes, looking on with a mixture of powerlessness and pride at the maturing Elliot. Another fine example of the often-overlooked subtlety and texture Spielberg‘s films are packed with.

5). Alex Kitner's death (Jaws)
Some say Spielberg can't do dark. The death of young Alex Kitner in Jaws proves otherwise. Coming early in the film, this scene is a master class in slowly building up tension, with Spielberg letting us know that the shark will attack but not who it will attack. Alex who, in an added twist of tragedy is only allowed to go back into the water after begging his mother, seems the least likely candidate, so when Jaws does sink his teeth into him you know the film means business. But it‘s the end of the scene that I want to concentrate on most here. Once the shark has taken his prey, we see concerned parents rushing into the water to collect their children. Blind panic is replaced by deathly silence as all but one return. The image of Mrs Kitner, alone on the shore, calling her son‘s name is one of the most quietly devastating scenes Spielberg has ever shot.

6). Anything Goes! (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
Raiders of the Lost Ark screenwriter Philip Kaufman apparently declined the offer to work on Temple of Doom because he felt it was too mean-spirited, and it's difficult to disagree. From the dubious humour of the banquet sequence to the heart-ripping of the Thugee temple, Doom almost entirely lacks the lightness of touch that made its predecessor so iconic. I say almost, because it opens with one of the series' best sequences. A glorious, Busby Berklely inspired musical number, it features the film's banshee in distress, Willie Scott, singing Cole Porter's Anything Goes in Mandarian. Spielberg has often said he one day hopes to make a full-blown musical, and this sequence has enough vim and vigour to suggest he‘s more than capable of pulling it off.

7). Restaurant conversation (Catch Me If You Can)
Many recent Spielberg films have focused explicitly on the parent's responsibility to their child, but Catch Me If You Can looks at the child's responsibility to the parent. Based on Frank Agbagnale’s autobiography, this 60s-set caper movie finds our hero trying to use the money he earns from his cons to help his divorced father win back his mother. Of course there’s no hope of that happening, and this scene, in which Frank has bought his father a new Cadillac which he can‘t accept due to a government investigation into his finances, is one of the film‘s most heartbreaking. Walken's performance is beautifully understated as he tells the story of how he and his wife first met and starts to work out what his son is up to. The character is later revealed to have died in a freak accident while running to catch a train. Maybe, Spielberg seems to be suggesting, he wouldn‘t have needed that train has Frank quit his fantasy life sooner and stayed behind to help his father ease his woes in a more realistic way.

8). Wonderment (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
Spielberg himself has identified the scene in Close Encounters in which young Barry Guiler stands in front of the open door at his family home with an extra-terrestrial inferno blazing in front of him as the key image of his career, and it’s difficult to disagree: that moment embodies the wonderment and promise inherent in all Spielberg films. But Close Encounters also contains another key Spielberg shot, one which is perhaps more significant than the Barry scene. As the mothership prepares to take off at the film’s climax, the gathered scientists look on with wonder and awe. In three simple shots, Spielberg shows us their reactions, slowing tracking in on their awestruck faces. It’s a shot Spielberg has used to varying effect in virtually all his films, but this is my favourite example.

9). Viktor’s Matchmaking (The Terminal)
I’ve said it before in this blog and I’ll probably say it again, but just to make it totally clear The Terminal is so, so much more than just a silly romantic comedy. It’s a post 9/11 satire on immigration. Seriously! Think about it: Viktor Naborski arrives in the US from Krakosia and instead of being welcomed with open arms, he’s imprisoned in an airport which is covered from head to toe in ads. The country that once promised to take “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” has mutated into a world dominated by individualism, epitomised by Stanley Tucci airport head who is hoping to dupe Viktor into escaping the airport and ultimately being arrested so he can gain promotion. Spielberg contrasts this character with the thriving multi-cultural community within the airport, which consists of Hispanics, African-Americans and Indians. Working menial but important manual jobs, they are the heartbeat of the airport and in this wonderful scene Spielberg blends his political point with fun romantic comedy as Viktor hooks cleaner Enrique up with immigration officer Dolores.

10) Smoke Gets In Your Eye (Always)
Spielberg may be famous for science-fiction and fantasy, but it’s drama Always that is arguably his least grounded film. A remake of Victor Fleming's 1943 romance A Guy Named Joe, it finds Spielberg indulging his love of the falseness of movies. Nobody is as quick-witted as Richard Dreyfuss’s maverick aerial firefighter Pete, nor as humorously earthy as his friend and colleague Al (John Goodman), or as sweetly spunky as girlfriend Dorinda. Nobody, that is, except the inhabitants of movie land. A film drenched in the moxy and occasional schmaltz of classic Hollywood, Always is the kind of movie you wish you lived in, but sadly don’t; a point best typified by an early scene in which Dreyfuss surprises Hunter with a party to celebrate her birthday. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is played by a cheesy band; Hunter, clad in a beautiful white dress, offers to dance with the rest of the pilots, encouraging them to, in unison, run off to clean their soot-ridden hands and faces; and Goodman and Dreyfuss roam about the scene cracking a bunch of ridiculously quick-witted jokes. Wonderful stuff in an imperfect but warm-hearted flick.