This pictorial study puts Steven Spielberg's career in focus: from his first feature, "The Sugarland Express", through his phenomenal blockbusters, including "Jaws", Jurassic Park", and "Schindler's List". Photos.

Director Steven Spielberg is more of an auteur than given recognition for. "The Films of Steven Spielberg" highlights the maturation of a filmmaker with movies that reflect the director's own life, fascinations, and obsessions. Spielberg's upbringing and foray into the 1970s Hollywood business structure show us the origin of themes that are consistently present in Spielberg's films such as fatherhood, World War II and his collaboration with composer John Williams. Although mainstream cinema has become dominated by franchises - Spielberg has proven to be routinely ahead of his time in the post-9/11 era.

“This lively collection of essays on the ideas underpinning his films enriches and enlarges our understanding of Spielberg’s complex body of work.” —Joseph McBride, author of Steven Spielberg: A Biography Few directors have had as powerful an influence on the film industry and the movie-going public as Steven Spielberg. Whatever the subject—dinosaurs, war, extra-terrestrials, slavery, the Holocaust, or terrorism—one clear and consistent touchstone is present in all of Spielberg’s films: an interest in the human condition. In movies ranging from Jaws to Schindler’s List to Amistad to Jurassic Park, he has brought to life some of the most popular heroes—and most despised villains—of all time. In Steven Spielberg and Philosophy, Dean A. Kowalski and some of the nation’s most respected philosophers investigate Spielberg’s art to illuminate the nature of humanity. The book explores rich themes such as cinematic realism, fictional belief, terrorism, family ethics, consciousness, virtue and moral character, human rights, and religion in Spielberg’s work. Avid moviegoers and deep thinkers will discover plenty to enjoy in this collection.

This collection, representing the work of scholars from a range of theoretical frameworks and disciplines, examines aspects of the preoccupation with children and childhood in Steven Spielberg’s films. It includes essays on such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun, Hook, Jurassic Park, and more.

A film-centric portrait of the extraordinarily gifted movie director whose decades-long influence on American popular culture is unprecedented Everything about me is in my films, Steven Spielberg has said. Taking this as a key to understanding the hugely successful moviemaker, Molly Haskell explores the full range of Spielberg s works for the light they shine upon the man himself. Through such powerhouse hits as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones, to lesser-known masterworks like A.I. and Empire of the Sun, to the haunting Schindler s List, Haskell shows how Spielberg s uniquely evocative filmmaking and story-telling reveal the many ways in which his life, work, and times are entwined. Organizing chapters around specific films, the distinguished critic discusses how Spielberg s childhood in non-Jewish suburbs, his parents traumatic divorce, his return to Judaism upon his son s birth, and other events echo in his work. She offers a brilliant portrait of the extraordinary director a fearful boy living through his imagination who grew into a man whose openness, generosity of spirit, and creativity have enchanted audiences for more than 40 years.

"A biography of film director Steven Spielberg"--Provided by publisher.

Detailed textual analysis of films from Spielberg's entire career reveal that alongside conventional commercial appeal, his movies function as a self-reflexive, they invite divergent readings and self-conscious spectatorship which contradict assumptions about their ideological tendencies.