Director Report Card: Steven Spielberg (1969)

The name Steven Spielberg might as well be synonymous with the words “movie director” or “filmmaker.” He is, by most measures, the most successful and popular director of all time. Moreover, he's also a critically beloved institution, who makes both works of smashing populist entertainment and important, award-winning dramas. He was the first director whose name I ever knew. When I was a kid and realized I wanted to make movies someday, he became my idol. It goes without saying he's made some of my all-time favorite films. It was only a matter of time before I sat down and wrote about each of his movies, something I haven't done before only because Spielberg's output is somewhat daunting. No time like the present. Let's get started with the humble roots of one of the most essential names in the history of filmmaking. 

1. Night Gallery

There's a story about how Steven Spielberg got his start in the industry. Supposedly, the teenage would-be filmmaker waltzed onto the Universal back-lot in a suit. The guard assumed he must be someone important and let him through. The kid walked into an unoccupied office and commandeered it as his own. This is a tall tale, possibly spread by the man himself. The less whimsical truth is that Spielberg made home movies as a youngster, including a sci-fi epic called “Firelight.” As a teenager, he briefly worked as an assistant in Universal's editing wing. In film school, the same studio offered him the funds to make a short called “Amblin'.” The 26-minute presentation so impressed Sidney Sheinberg, that Spielberg was immediately signed to a contract. The 20 year old filmmaker was immediately put to work in the studios' television department. His first professional credit was the middle segment of the 1969 pilot movie for “Night Gallery.” 

In the popular consciousness, “Night Gallery” will always be in the shadow of “The Twilight Zone.” Rod Serling's earlier anthology series would influence countless programs that appeared in its wake, its combination of fantastique storytelling and social commentary remaining lauded to this day. “Night Gallery,” meanwhile, managed to be a mildly spooky show. Yet that has its own pleasures. The framing device, of Serling delivering ominous introductions in his typically sonorous style, sets the appropriate mood early on. An empty gallery full of creepy paintings is an excellent setting for a horror anthology show. It's hard to undersell the power of an expert master-of-ceremonies like Serling talking directly to the audience, especially in such a bewitching location.

Fittingly, paintings play a role in each of these stories. In “The Cemetery,” Jeremy moves in with his uncle William, a painter whose health is failing following a stroke. Jeremy is the sole heir and plans to get his inheritance as quickly as possible. Yet he soon notices the paintings of the cemetery outside the house changing every day after his uncle's death. In “Eyes,” a blind-since-birth heiress named Claudia Menlo pays for a cornea transplant that will grant her twelve hours of sight. A desperate living donor gives up his eyes up for her to see. Claudia's one night of vision corresponds with a city-wide black-out. In “The Escape Route,” an on-the-run Nazi officer hides out in Argentina. He's drawn to a painting of a fisherman in a local museum. That's where an elderly Jewish man recognizes him from his days in the camps. 

Each of the stories in “Night Gallery” fit the morality tale structure familiar to readers of E.C. horror comics. In each one, a bad person gets their karmic punishment via fittingly ironic and frequently supernatural means. This is most apparent in “The Cemetery.” Jeremy Evans makes it clear, from the moment he first appears, that he's only there for his uncle's money. Within a few scenes, he's put his senile uncle in front of an open window. He mistreats the estate's faithful butler, Mr. Portifoy. He's a wantonly greedy asshole and you can't wait to see him get his comeuppance. Yet “Night Gallery's” karmic universe extends to everyone, each murder being worth another, which leads into a (probably unnecessary) ironic ending.

This is a tried and true formula for ghost stories. “The Cemetery” relies on another tested gothic trope. That would be the creepy old house. The home central to the story is foreboding and aged but also rather small on the inside. This is probably a result of a limited TV budget but it ends up working in the segment's favorite. There's a cramped, uncomfortable feeling to the interiors here, contributing to the portentous atmosphere. Director Boris Segal – who primarily did television and TV movies, though “The Omega Man' is a notable non-TV credit – brings that '70s made-for-TV horror vibe that can't help but create a spooky mood. It's kind of corny but also eerie in a creaky way, with its slow zooms on grave stones or doom-predicting paintings. This is most apparent in the finale, where unseen horrors drive characters made. 

“The Cemetery” is further elevated by two outstanding performances from reliably great actors. Roddy McDowell stars as Jeremy, with an unidentified Southern accent of some sort. McDowell plays the character as a totally self-interested and foppish dandy. His greed is evident from the minute he walks on-screen. McDowell delights in such hammy villainy, making an ideal larger-than-life jerk you can't wait to see punished. Ossie Davis, as he always did, projects an incredible dignity and force-of-will as Mr. Portifoy. Even when playing a butler, you couldn't help but respect the man. The tension between these two gives “The Cemetery” some real drive as it heads towards its macabre conclusion.

“Eyes” is probably the main reason people watch the “Night Gallery' movie anymore, on account of being Spielberg's proper debut. There's no doubt that young Mr. Spielberg was eager to show off his talent here. “Eyes” is full of striking visuals and camera movements. There's an excellent use of depth in Claudia's spacious penthouse. Before she has her surgery, an inventive montage of eyes and faces kaleidoscope together. When the old woman begins to regain her sight, there's some clever use of perspective, the glinting chandelier in the foreground. Once the black out begins, she's shown wandering through an entire black room, replicating her blindness for the audience in an inventive way. Supposedly Spielberg wanted to include more fancy camerawork but the short television shooting schedule limited him. If this is true, he still managed to pull off a lot of impressive visuals here.

“The Cemetery” was a straight-forward story of revenge from beyond the grave, of a scumbag getting his just desserts. It's tempting to read “Eyes” in a similar vein. After all, Claudia is only interested in her own needs and doesn't care who she has to pay-off to get there. She's blackmailing the doctor performing the surgery, to begin with. And she is ironically punished for her crimes. Yet a theme of class conflict emerges from “Eyes” as well. Claudia is absurdly rich, rich enough to grant herself sight for only twelve hours. Sidney, the man whose eyes she buys, is desperately poor, which is exacerbated by his addiction to gambling. It's a world of haves and have-nots, much like our own. Only the karmic justice of the universe can punish the haves. 

“Eyes” also had the novice filmmaker working with a Hollywood legend, in the form of Joan Crawford. Rumor has it she was initially aghast to be directed by someone as young as Spielberg but he quickly won her over. Crawford was well into the hag horror portion of her career by 1969, which “Night Gallery” nicely fits into. As was usually the case by this point, Crawford's performance is on the histrionic side. She plays Claudia as totally devious. When trapped in darkness again, Crawford's wails towards the heave as melodramatically as possible. On the more grounded side is Tom Bosley as the sad sack who sells his sight. He does a good job of putting on a smile that never betrays the misery he feels inside. 

Of the trio of stories presented in the “Night Gallery” pilot, “The Escape Route” is definitely the least interesting. All the segments here revolve around the wicked being punished. Yet there was characters to root for in “Eyes” and a pleasure to watching things unfold in “The Cemetery.” This story of a Nazi officer on the run from his past is a little too weighed down by its own portent. The wanted man is miserable and spends much of the episode wallowing in that misery, interacting drearily with those around him. We mostly stuck just waiting around for him to be punished and it gets tedious quickly. Unlike the other two stories, which have clear supernatural or unusual hooks to their premises, this one never quite solidifies into a coherent narrative. It's mostly about a bad, unhappy man hoping to escape his past and finding that impossible, running until an unexplained supernatural vengeance is visited on him.

At the very least, “The Escape Route” is stylishly directed by Barry Shear. Shear made a lot of TV movies and episodes but does have two cult favorites to his name, “Wild in the Streets” and “Across 110th Street.” Shear does bring some that energy to a series of chase scenes here. The foot chases are cut quickly, to create a frenzy feeling. As the situation grows more desperately, freeze frames are included, to further indicate the protagonist's frantic mindset. There's some interesting use of inverted color in several moments. The long scene devoted to the Nazi officer talking with the woman who lives next door is directed practically in split-screen, the wall between the two tenets staying in the center of the frame. Shear clearly knew what he was doing, even if the script is a bit repetitive. 

Richard Kiley stars in the segment, as the beleaguered German. Kiley does project the kind of desperation you'd expect from a part like this. That's best displayed during a sequence where he belts out the German anthem in a rowdy bar, eventually quieting down everyone else and revealing his status as a Nazi-in-hiding. He's a man who keeps running from his past but, inevitably, seems destined to meet up with it. That's the case when he meets Sam Jaffe as the elderly Jewish man. Jaffe does an excellent job of conveying the weight in the man's age and the strange familiarity with which he greets Kiley's character. Despite some strong performances and direction, and a fittingly ironic final image, “The Escape Route” is easily the weakest of the segments presented here. 

Obviously, “Night Gallery” would be successful, giving NBC strong enough ratings to move forward with a series. The weekly “Night Gallery” would begin in December of 1970, a little over a year after the movie's debut. The show would run for two seasons of sixty minute installments, with two or three stories an episode, and a final season of thirty minute episodes. The show would never reach the level of popularity of “The Twilight Zone” and Rod Serling often butted heads with network executives. Serling would be dead two years later and “Night Gallery” is often regarded as a respectable program that never reached its full potential. Despite that, its pilot movie is a pretty solid ninety minute presentation. It's good for fans of seventies genre television and, of course, Spielberg devotees curious about the beginnings of his career. [Grade: B]