steven spielberg: a retrospective

Updated edition published to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Spielberg’s first feature film and featuring a foreword from the master filmmaker himself.

From the irresistible fantasy of E.T. to the gritty realism of Saving Private Ryan, the films of Steven Spielberg have captured the imagination of the world. Renowned critic Richard Schickel now gives us the definitive illustrated monograph on this Oscar-winning Hollywood icon, whose long and glittering career few directors have equaled.

Spielberg is one of the most influential and inspirational minds in cinema, and Schickel provides perceptive analysis of 60 years’ worth of work, with illuminating film-by-film commentary on such masterpieces as the underwater thriller, Jaws; the high-speed adventures of Indiana Jones; the harrowing Schindler’s List; sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind; to his most recent releases, the Oscar-winning Bridge of Spies and West Side Story.

Richard Schickel is the author of more than thirty books. He is the creator of an equal number of documentary films, including portraits of Charlie Chaplin, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. Over the past three decades he has made eighteen such directorial portraits, which, taken together, constitute a unique record of the history of filmmaking since the beginning of sound film production. Since 1965, he has been a movie reviewer for Life, Time and Time.com.