Spielberg Films

Alfred Hitchcock has perhaps exerted the strongest influence on the films of Steven Spielberg. There are a number of thematic commonalities as well as a shared sense of form and content. Although there are several relevant Hitchcock films that might serve as an example of this inspiration the one film that appears to mark the bridge between Hitchcock and Spielberg is The Birds. Hitchcock had a particular eye for framing the most unsettling levels of sheer suspense from the most mundane settings, such as a coastal village in Northern California. Spielberg used an innocuous beach community in the film Jaws in a very similar way. In both of these films, the directors are merging the recognizable and the secure with a visceral sense of terror and fear. However, the comparisons go deeper into cinematic motivation and the ability to both shock and unnerve audiences using familiar props and locations.

The use of these familiar settings actually elevates the segue into terror insomuch as the sense of security and personal safety associated with them is corrupted by the introduction of fear, either from mysteriously homicidal birds or a rogue great white shark. This comparison may be the most obvious nod to the artistry of Hitchcock from the repertoire of Steven Spielberg, but there are certainly others ( Morris 24 ). In this particular consideration, both directors have succeeded in using what is familiar by merely altering certain components of it to suggest a dislocation that channels directly to human fear and anxiety. This is a remarkably efficient trigger for suspense because it exploits common associations and attitudes. Viewing either film the audience is at first lulled into an associated sense of safety for the characters that appear on screen. The sleepy coastal village of Bodega Bay conjures images of pastoral activities, and a pleasant remoteness from the chaos and veiled sense of insecurity one might associate with cities. Once the viewer is immersed in the bucolic calm of the location the director is poised to introduce elements of uncertainty that eventually transition into terror. This contrast is a potent psychological button.

In the same sense, Spielberg frames the village of Amity—which means friendship—in familiar activities and pleasures. Nothing is artificial or out of the ordinary except the radical adjustments to common wildlife. In the same way that Hitchcock converts a common aspect of nature into dread, Spielberg invests the shark with prehistoric menace, the idea that somewhere behind the civilized appearance of everyday life human beings are not at all secure with the complex and mysterious elements of nature that surround them. This disorientation contains resonances that are unavoidable and almost primitive. The ideas of danger are no more than behavioral adjustments within a common reference point, this is what captures the imagination and invests the anxiety and fear that both directors create ( Schickel 21 ). In The Birds Hitchcock is hyperaware of each scene in the immediate sense that it is manipulating the viewer, the sequence doesn’t reach its crescendo until the birds launch an attack on the village in broad daylight, and in this pivotal scene, the gradual and calculated build-up works brilliantly. Chaos descends from the sky, children are terrorized, adults are attacked and mauled, an innocent motorist is set ablaze by spilled gasoline. The way Spielberg set up the mayhem on the beach is strikingly similar.

Spielberg works an identical angle in setting up the suspense in Jaws, the death of the girl at the beginning of the film does not register as anything more than an anomaly, just as the initial bird strikes in Hitchcock’s film are not recognized as the start of something unforeseen and terrifying. Hitchcock’s camera is at first a casual observer, pouring over Bodega Bay like a tourist, there is calm almost clinical detachment in the scenery that drifts before the viewer, the hills that overshadow the town and the windy stretch of highway that winds south to San Francisco. At the introduction to horror, the camera is suddenly a visceral addition to the scene, no longer a detached presence observing activities that are neither punctuated nor unnoticed. The unique subtlety of the directorial manipulation is invisible, and this is what gives it power over the audience. Spielberg’s camera records the approach of summer tourists, they arrive in cars and ferries. The beach is a playground, as far removed from potential peril as might be permissible.

Spielberg’s camera moves with a conscious association to Hitchcock’s, the sharp contrasts between casual security and terror are the touchstones that each artist is playing with. Both the shark and the birds violate the viewer’s connection to their environment, they remind us of the inherent treachery of nature and circumstance. Both films evidence similarities in style and cinematic instinct, although there are personal signatures that mark each director in ways that are almost beyond articulation. In this consideration the camera is an extension of each director’s aesthetic eye, framing a foreground that looks familiar but contains shocking surprises and jolts (Schickel 33 ). The main determinant here is the exploitation and shifting of the familiar as the means of turning the tables on the audience in unexpected ways.

Although Jaws is perhaps the most obvious nod to Hitchcock, Spielberg’s earlier work also reveals stylistic and thematic references to the director. In Spielberg’s television movie Dual, there were similar residues of Hitchcock, here again, the mundane highway and motor vehicles are converted to instruments of terror as a mysterious trucker terrorizes a traveling businessman. In several key scenes, there are brief reminders of the Hitchcock style of suspense, for instance when the protagonist falls asleep in his car by the side of the road and is suddenly set upon by the trucker who pursues him in a cat and mouse game he scarcely understands. The audience is meant to identify with the character played by Dennis Weaver in the sense that he cannot understand how or why he is swept up in this murderous game. At least part of the suspense that Spielberg creates and maintains is premised on the character’s bewilderment.

Further along in Spielberg’s career, there are recurring nods to Hitchcock in scene construct and the essentials of suspense. In a complex multi-action scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the director fashions a scene with fire and gasoline that has an unmistakable reference point in The Birds. In the scene focusing on the flying wing, although the action is suitably divided for the viewer, the danger of kerosene igniting as it steadily creeps toward flame is reminiscent of the bird attack on Bodega Bay, and the explosion of the gas station. Both formal and technical similarities have been present in Spielberg’s movies since the early seventies when we experimented with his own style, perhaps unaware of the impact that Hitchcock may have had on his artistic sensibilities and the approach to suspense. In this respect, each director is poised against the audience of his day, Hitchcock in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, and Spielberg in the 70’s when the art of filmmaking was changing in ways that would complement his style.

To a certain extent, Spielberg may be unaware of the degree to which Hitchcock has influenced him as a filmmaker. Exceptional artists are invariably inspired and influenced in their expression by other exceptional artists, this hardly diminishes the work they have created or the work they will create. Cinematic art begins in the mind, it takes on preferred images and angles that may appeal to the filmmaker for any number of structural or thematic reasons. Both Hitchcock and Spielberg are spectacle oriented filmmakers, more so with Spielberg who appeared on the scene at the dawn of the special effects revolution in Hollywood ( McBride, 17 ). Where the determinants are most recognizable are in the approach to visceral suspense and human terror, clearly both artists understood how to mine this psychological vein for maximum effect. Hitchcock returned the audience to the dark bedroom of their childhood, the rush of adrenalin at the slightest unfamiliar sound or sensation. Spielberg, in turn, dealt in childhood associations to menace and instinctual fear, however on slightly different terms.

It should nevertheless be stressed that each director is unique in their approach and that in no way did the influence of Hitchcock on Spielberg’s work negatively impact its power and range with audiences or the extraordinary legacy of Spielberg’s cinematic resume. One can envision a young Spielberg sitting in a dark theater watching Hitchcock’s Psycho with clenched fists and soaking up the directorial flourishes and nuances like a budding film student poised before a master. Where other members of the audience are simply riveted to the screen Spielberg is learning a craft that will heavily impact the art that he creates for the rest of his life. This formative Hitchcockian imagery and cinematic calculation is the architectural basis for constructing his vision and film signature.

Even in Spielberg’s later work, there are residuals of the influence of Hitchcock that find their way into the fabric of the film, sometimes with appropriate discretion and other times in very direct and recognizable degrees. Both Hitchcock and Spielberg want considerably more than to merely entertain their audience, rather both directors want to unnerve, and re-orient their viewers, although Hitchcock remained closer to these themes than Spielberg. Steven Spielberg expanded his vision in a dazzling display of cinematic pyrotechnics that did not necessarily break down the plot into convenient distractions but pulled the audience into alternate worlds that only a filmmaker could conjure. The idea that the filmmakers themselves are equally invigorated by the prospect of frightening, surprising, or dazzling millions of people is another aspect of the motivation to create movies.

Spielberg’s recurring themes of ordinary characters finding themselves in the midst of extraordinary circumstances also share common ground with Hitchcock, who preferred everyday people to serve as props for the chaos and commotion he would place them in. Spielberg dabbled in a much greater range of topics and themes however the aesthetic determinants continued to manifest in works as varied and stylistically different from Hitchcock’s as Minority Report and Jurassic Park. The skillful building of fear into fully developed terror—as evidenced in Jurassic Park—managed to once again invoke a certain Hitchcockian sensibility in which the audience is vicariously participating in the scene with the actors and the ability of the director to make the sequence real for just a few seconds becomes the measure of the artist. Beyond the common comparisons, there are indications that both men liked to surprise audiences, not merely tell a story in a routine way, and bring it to a logical or predictable conclusion.

When Hitchcock’s Psycho was released Spielberg was a teenager, however, the revolutionary approach to terror employed by the director must have left indelible aesthetic signatures on the young Spielberg. The mastery with which the director shot his scenes and established a palpable sense of dread could not have been missed by the boy who would film Jaws almost fifteen years later. The specific use of chilling musical chords that precede mayhem in both films is yet another instance of conscious or unconscious influence. Where the viewer may not make this connection, in retrospect when the power of the images are relived the ode to Hitchcock that appears in varied intensity throughout Spielberg’s luminous career is more than apparent.

Perhaps Spielberg sees eye to eye with the master of suspense, and although each director invests a personal signature in their approach to filmmaking the conscious similarities that tie Spielberg to Hitchcock are there to be explored on the screen. Filmmakers are as varied and structurally diverse as painters, yet the aesthetic questions that fill each one’s vision share certain flourishes. The shared relevance of Spielberg and Hitchcock in crafting terror has few equals, but many aspirants. The cinematic imprint each director has created will certainly motivate and inspire another generation of filmmakers.

One almost wonders how the Films of Hitchcock might have differed if he were beginning his career in the 1970s instead of the 1930s, or perhaps how the films of Steven Spielberg might have differed if he entered Hollywood at the same time as Hitchcock. The affectionate nod to Alfred Hitchcock manifests early in the career of Steven Spielberg, in both form and content, and the exact degree of this influence on his work is left to the viewer and the fan. However, the comparison itself is only a small part of the jubilant cinematic signature of Steven Spielberg or the force of the work that is yet to come. Certainly, there were other influences on Spielberg, but I dare say none so resonating and important in his body of work. To his credit, he could be inspired by a master such as Alfred Hitchcock without compromising or diminishing the scale and value of his own work. It is notable that Hitchcock flatly refused to meet with Spielberg, even after the astounding success of Jaws. However, had the two met and discussed movies there is little doubt that they would have found the other very interesting and inspiring.

Works Cited

McBride, Joseph. Steven Spielberg: A biography. 2nd ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. 17 Print.

Morris, Nigel. The cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of light. London: Wallflower, 2007. 24 Print.

Schickel, Richard. Steven Spielberg: A retrospective. New York: Sterling, 2012. 21-33. Print.