Steven Spielberg, All the Films: The Story Behind Every Movie, Episode, and Short

Film journalists Devillard, Olivier Bousquet, and Nicolas Schaller present a detailed and photo-filled look at the career of Steven Spielberg, examining the origins, productions, and critical responses to all of the filmmaker’s projects through 2022’s The Fabelmans. Beginning with a short biography covering Spielberg’s early life and influences, the book delves, sometimes repetitively, into each of Spielberg’s films as well as episodes from series such as Night Gallery and Columbo, which Spielberg directed at the start of his career. The authors reveal the casting choices, technical wizardry, and sometimes convoluted writing processes that shaped Spielberg’s most iconic films, as well as the challenges—injuries, hurricanes, and malfunctioning robotic sharks among them—that plagued his productions. Their analyses of Spielberg’s projects, identifying oft-repeated themes of alienation, childhood trauma, and fractured families as echoes of Spielberg’s own life experiences, are thought-provoking if not entirely convincing in every case. Where Bousquet, Devillard, and Schaller truly excel is in drawing the attention of readers to hallmarks of Spielberg’s visual symbolism that they may have previously missed.