Last September Open Culture, a site that brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community, published another great article on Steven Spielberg and his two debut films.
When Steven Spielberg was six or seven years old his father took him to see Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. When he arrived at the theater he felt cheated, because he thought he was going to see a real circus, with real-life clowns and elephants and lion tamers. But as the pictures moved across the screen the boy’s disappointment soon gave way to enchantment. One scene in particular–the film’s spectacular train wreck–would alter the course of his life.
The article by Mike Springer, enplanes how Spielberg started making films and goes into detail about his first two, Escape to Nowhere and Firelight.