Steven Spielberg

Popular cinema at the highest level of craft, built on withheld sight. Spielberg stages wonder and terror the same way — a reaction shot first, the thing itself late — and returns throughout to absent fathers and children who have to manage without them.

Signature

• Reaction before revelation; the creature or wonder delayed.
• Fluid long takes disguised as invisible coverage.
• Suburban and domestic texture grounding extraordinary events.
• Children as competent moral centres.