User Reviews

A young man with a guitar case is hitchhiking on a desert road. He runs into a pretty girl who is also hitchhiking. They connect in a seed spitting contest and walking the road. They smoke a joint and spend the night together. They get to the beach and the man goes frolicking in the waves. The girl sneaks a peek inside the guitar case and finds everything except a guitar. She smiles and leaves him behind.

It's well-made for a student film. There's no dialogue probably due to the difficulty of sound recording in the outside elements. I do wish he change up the guitar hippie music although he has some fun doing sound effects for seed spitting contest. The film shows that Spielberg has the natural skills as well as an understanding of filmmaking. The sex scene is a bit stiff and old fashion cute. He also could have made a bigger deal about the guitar case. Overall it has a certain low grade charm that show the early promise of Spielberg.

"Amblin'" is a 25-minute short film written and directed by filmmaking legend Steven Spielberg almost 50 years ago. He was in his early 20s when he made this one, but you can see that this is far from being the first film he directed. He was already pretty experienced at this point and it's obvious as the camera work was really well done for a man of his age. Unfortunately, this film here also has a big flaw. The story is so boring and uninteresting that I am tempted to call it non-existing almost. We basically follow a young couple amblin' for the entire film. The female actress has made a couple more movies, the guy quickly stopped acting. Spielberg has never been the greatest writer in my opinion and it bay have been a good thing that he left this area to more skilled people in recent years. His work here really drags, even for such a short film and I cannot recommend. Taking his age into account, however, works somewhat in his favor, so i will not be too strict with my rating here.

In commenting on this film, I must take into account that the majority of those reading have not seen Amblin'. I must also take into account my appreciation for Spielberg. As a filmmaker myself, I can easily state Spielberg was the person who lead me to where I am now. His films have meant more than entertainment to me. So it was with this motivation that I made my best attempt to seek out this film. After watching it, I found that experiencing Amblin' was a special if not entirely distinctive experience.

The job of a filmmaker is to tell a story visually. This is exactly what Spielberg does. In fact, it is purely told with images. Not one word is spoken throughout the film (save the main song "Amblin" by October Country.) Tracking shots, special photographic effects, freeze frames, and transitions are the tools that Spielberg uses to tell the story. We don't need words.

For those who are interested, I have supplied a basic outline of the events in the story. Those who do not want to know would do well to skip down after the stars.

The film opens with the sound of wind and the title song as we see the credits over shots of the sun (one of Spielberg's trademarks) at first light. We are introduced to the main character (The Boy) from a high angle, walking along a long, dusty highway road. As we go in closer, Spielberg uses a camera move from Seven Samurai to introduce the Girl. With only an exchange of looks between the two, they decide to move on together.

One of the sequences that follow is an olive-spitting contest; with a can of olives, they see who can spit the nuts the farthest across the breakdown line on the road. It's an old hat sequence with some strange sound effects but it works. Unfortunately, there is a trick Spielberg uses here and quite a lot in the film: the freeze frame (with a strange pluck of a guitar as a sound effect.) On the first viewing, it's quite jarring as it brings you out of the story, but on multiple viewings it works. (It's an experimental element, something Godard would use quite a lot.) Through the second act, which consists of about 11 minutes, we find our characters trying to hitch rides from unwilling drivers (in one section, the Girl flags down the cars as the Boy is hiding. By the time he runs to the Girl, the car is gone.) After practically getting run over by a speeding car, they hide in a dark tunnel and, seen only in silhouette, smoke pot. What follows is a nicely done sequence of special photographic effects where we witness the Boy's experience of being high. Dissolves and color corrections highlight the series of images.

Throughout the film, the Boy has been carrying a guitar case and there is a nice motif of the Girl constantly trying the open the case; the Boy keeps stopping her. There is also a sequence where they are picked up by some kids in one of those '60s buses. The boy feels out of place and it takes a couple of moments for the Girl to realize this. The kids are trying to open his case but he stops them. Consequently, they are dropped off again.

At the end of the second act, we find ourselves at a campfire. The two characters exchange looks and, in a few moments, and some very well done shots, they kiss. The transition between the end of this scene to the third act is one of those brilliant scene-transitions Spielberg is known for. A shot of a zipper being zipped dissolves into a moving shot of a painted line on the road. Spielberg would use these connecting ideas in all of his subsequent films. (I am especially reminded of Always, Schindler's List, and the scene directly after the murder of Chrissie in Jaws.) Finally, in the third act, they reach the Pacific Coast and, as the Boy jumps into the Ocean, the Girl looks into the guitar case and discovers something about the Boy. She picks up her things and leaves as the Boy stays in the water, in a way, finding himself.

* * * * * * * * * * *

One of the main themes in the body of Spielberg's work is the lost boy, and this is no clearer than in Amblin'. This is a Boy who doesn't know whether to hit the books or follow his dreams; to lead a structured life or a free one; to be uptight or liberated. This is only an interpretation but I'm guessing this is what Spielberg was feeling at the time. The dream of meeting another person who can connect and understand you is a dream that most people have. Interestingly enough, the ending is a rather melancholy one for a Spielberg film, something he would do again in The Sugarland Express. (Duel and Something Evil have more inclusive endings.) Of course, there are trademarks that can be found here that are apparent in his future films. I have already mentioned the transitions between scenes, which create a more cohesive film. There are also moments where characters look off-screen as we dolly in on their faces. And there are scenes that open on a detail in the scene and we pull back to reveal the characters (instead of giving us an establishing shot first and then into the details.)

If you take the story and just look at it without the mise-en-scene, it's a rather bland and clichéd story. It's the directing and style that makes it noteworthy. Steven Spielberg used this film to get his contract into Universal Studios and while it's not as great as I thought it would be, it definitely was a pleasure to experience.

So you make jump cuts, block shoots and seduce youngsters into thinking this is a bittersweet tale of a relationship that never got off the ground . And that's it.

Emperor's new clothes here.

Why would this home movie convince experienced directors to accept this man into their clique.

The content of the guitar case say everything.

The boy was engaged elsewhere and when she worked it out she knew he was not even 'hippy free love' conventional, he was degenerate.

She leaves. And SS gets hired. Interesting.

Very boring . 20 mins with nothing for the innocent to learn.

Stick with Citizen Kane

This movie is beautifully shot, well made, and completely pointless. This film was an excellent example of how Spielberg was able to take an un-story and tell in such a way that we almost forget how terrible the movie is. The non-twist at the end with the guitar case was such a huge let-down that it left me with the feeling that I had just wasted 25 minutes of my life. It was, to me anyway, the cinematic equivalent of a Hostess Snowball; pretty to look at but utterly lacking in nutritional value. That being said, if you change the contents of the guitar case to something remotely interesting, then you have an actual movie. You can force a point out of the movie by saying that it is about how we are all just drifting in the wind. Or that the guy with the case was a poser, symbolic of our superficial society. But that's one hell of a stretch.

A lot of things click while watching Amblin'. After all, this is the work that reportedly got Spielberg a contract with Universal and started him off on a legendary career, not a trivial achievement by any means. No, it is no coincidence that a 25 minute short film, had the power to persuade Universal's executives to hire a director, who at the time was barely out of his teens.

There is an irresistible quality to the work that despite very poor available transfer, does not hide the skills and the sheer sense of liberated fun that so many student filmmakers strive for but rarely achieve. What is more, it is absolutely a work of the man who would go on to helm Duel, Jaws and Close Encounters within the decade of his hiring.

Amblin' is absolutely devoid of amateurishness.

This is not just due to the issues that typically come with student films or that so many of them tend to be very personal; rather it is because the director, who clearly already felt very comfortable in his role, was not merely experimenting with a certain theme but striving for something very particular. I've long understood that Spielberg's range as a filmmaker far exceeds the range of the majority of his vast fan base. The end results are often all the better for it (as is true of work of gifted and capable directors in general) and those viewers who do not fall under that rule, will be rewarded in ways that almost no other film experience can provide.

Amblin' is no exception for it is due to those special qualities that the film has that it will be appreciated even fuller by those who can both feel and think.

There are people who do not understand why "Lost In Translation" is such an incredible work and find it to be dull and pointless. It is no use explaining as it is impossible to convey the appeal of a film that, above all else, must connect emotionally - something that is very true of Amblin' as well. Luckily, there are many more viewers who saw the film and loved it.

Amblin' deserves to be seen as it is an achievement that aspiring students can actually get inspired and learn from.

In my heading I called Amblin' a tone poem and it very much feels like one. Visuals play an important role in both establishing the style and the setting, with musical cues (a fore-shadower of Spielberg's mastery of using music scores) standing in for dialog.

Of special note is the palatable chemistry between the two leads. Watching Amblin' one gets a very strong sense of growing sexual attraction between the pair, tension which culminates in one of the most romantic scenes I have seen. It is a testament to Spielberg's sense imagination that in one brief shot we can tell that the girl is fully topless even when there isn't much that we can actually see. What he does is create a feeling of un-staged closeness.

While it openly plays up the era it was made in, it would be very inaccurate to call Amblin a "hippy movie". The 60s atmosphere definitely informs the movie's feel and plot, but just as there is a lot more to that decade's vibe than the hippie movement alone, there is much more to the character's look and behavior. In fact, if anything, Amblin' can almost be seen as a send off of some of the more stereotypical 60s traits - a fact that is seemingly lost on quite a few of the earlier reviewers. One must also not forget that being a young man, Spielberg's own ideas of young people and relationships probably colored what we see in the movie. He clearly knows what it feels to be attracted by someone and this is his meditation on what it is like.

With its long takes and an emphasis on both the flirting and the realistic aspects of a budding bond, Amblin' can be seen as a very representative early French New Wave entrant.

Minor Spoilers follow:

In Amblin' it is not all "free love" and endless road. The ending makes it clear that disappointments, disillusionments and insecurities were very much in play. Each character had something to protect or hide and their shared future together was never guaranteed. Not because either one of them looked for was a one-night stand (I never got a feeling that anything that happened was pre-calculated) and was not interested in staying with the same partner. It was because the guy could not keep the mystery and the girl could no longer see him the same way she saw him before. What seemed like a quirk before took on a new meaning.

Cuteness could only take our hero so far. The moment he relaxed and let himself go was the moment he became vulnerable. That is the moment of the movie I connected with the most. How carefree and happy he looks. Maybe these moments of happiness are worth it even as he hoped she would be there because he got used to the feeling she gave him. However, the film's ending is both realistic and complicated. The characters made no promises, they exchanged no vows and their closeness, once their arrived at it is both spontaneous and completely earned. This is why we don't see they guy's reaction. Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he knows that this is as far he could have taken the relationship. Or maybe, he is riding his current high, and, for a brief moment, totally carefree.

End of Spoilers.

And, at the end, while I am very thankful to Amblin' for helping launch the career of the Great director, I am equally glad I saw it because it is among the finest short films I have seen. Love Amblin'.