Doing a little prep work for the next podcast, I watched Amblin', a 26 minute film from 1968. Oh, right...directed by a pre-bearded Steven Spielberg. Besides being the inspiration for his future production company name, it's also a perfect artifact of a young filmmaker honing his craft.
One of the more notable aspects of this story of two young hitchhikers amblin' along a desert highway is that it is completely dialogue-free, a decision that demonstrated a lot of foresight by a 22-year old. Too often, these bare-bones early films are sabotaged by the necessity of using unprofessional actors to bring to life a novice script. These shorts are essentially video business cards to try to get feature work. The last thing a struggling director needs is to have more attention on the bad acting than on his chops behind the lens.What we have here is simply a budding director having fun with his camera and developing his artistic eye (which apparently worked--he's made a couple of movies since then).
Last note: while it drags a bit in the middle, the ending was a bit of a surprise considering some of the weak finishes of his multi-million dollar epics.
And because we here at SMC love you, here it is (courtesy of JoBlo.com):
I need to mention that the male lead, Richard Levin, was a librarian when Spielberg cast him.
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