Steven Spielberg: A Biography - Softcover

McBride, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571193730 ISBN 13: 9780571193738

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 1998

Synopsis

Steven Spielberg is responsible for some of the most successful films of all time: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and the 'Indiana Jones' series. Yet for many years most critics condescendingly regarded Spielberg as a child-man incapable of dealing maturely with the complexities of life. The deeper levels of meaning in his films were largely ignored. This changed with Schindler's List, his masterpiece about a gentile businessman who saves eleven hundred Jews from the Holocaust. For Spielberg, the film was the culmination of a long struggle with his Jewish identity - an identity of which he had long been ashamed, but now triumphantly embraced. In his astute and perceptive biography, Joseph McBride reconciles Spielberg's seeming contradictions and produces a coherent portrait of the man who found a way to transmute the anxieties of his own childhood into some of the most emotionally powerful and viscerally exciting films ever made.

About this title

Review:

Writing a biography is tough enough when the subject is dead and the biographer must rely on a paper trail and recollections of contemporaries to relate the essence of the subject's life. When they are still alive--and especially when he is as powerful as Steven Spielberg--a whole new set of problems emerge. For one thing, it's difficult to find anyone willing to criticize a man who pulls as many strings in the film industry as Spielberg; for another, how does one evaluate a career that is still in progress? If the definitive Spielberg biography cannot yet be written, Joseph McBride's Steven Spielberg: A Biography will suffice in the interim. Though certainly affected by the aforementioned constraints, McBride still creates an impressive portrait of the man behind Schindler's List, E.T., Jurassic Park, and many, many more.

McBride is especially effective at drawing out the contours of Spielberg's childhood. Born in 1946 to Arnold and Leah Spielberg, the young Steven endured both frequent moves and his parents' unhappy domestic life. These factors, combined with the anti- Semitism he encountered as a teenager, drove the introverted Spielberg to seek approval through film-making. In addition to exploring Spielberg's private life, McBride offers some perceptive criticism of his work. Anyone interested in the film industry and Spielberg's place in it will find Joseph McBride's Steven Spielberg a valuable resource.

Review:

"Shrewd and unsentimental."

--Publishers Weekly
"Film history at its best: rich in information, often dazzling in perception."

--Kirkus Reviews
"Compulsively readable. . . . This will get us as close to Spielberg as we can without being Kate Capshaw."

--New Times (Los Angeles)

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0571193730
• ISBN 13: 9780571193738
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528