“The Fabelmans”, when cinema is a citationist and pays homage to the greatest

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“The Fabelmans”, Steven Spielberg’s latest feature film, is the film we loved most of all those released in 2022 and is a film capable of growing with each viewing and telling us something new about its history and style every time of the director who conceived and directed it.
No doubt the inspiration comes from the life of Spielberg himself, but within “The Fabelmans” there is also a real journey through many passages in the history of the Seventh Art.

It is certainly no coincidence that the film opens precisely “in line” to go to the cinema: it is the first time that little Sammy will attend a show in front of a big screen and his parents (one on one side and one on the other of the child, as if to suggest a possible future division, when he finds himself in the midst of mum and dad) try to anticipate what he will find in front of him. The film is “The greatest show in the world” from 1952, a perfect film both for title (symbolically in that “greatest show on earth” we can see the passion for cinema), both because directed by Cecil B. DeMilledirector par excellence of the great American blockbusters from the silent era onwards (think of “The Ten Commandments” of 1923, of which he will then direct a remake in 1956), also mentioned in the continuation of the narration and memorable in the role of himself in “Avenue of the sunset” (1950) by Billy Wilder, one of the greatest masterpieces on the world of Hollywood.

The train and silent cinema

Nor is it a coincidence that Spielberg chose the train crash as the sequence of “The greatest show in the world”: in fact, the train immediately takes us back to the cinema of the origins, starting from “The arrival of the train at La Ciotat station”, one of the first views made by Lumière brothers who had recently invented the Cinematograph. A reference similar to that proposed by a great friend of Spielberg such as Martin Scorsesewhich in “Hugo Cabret” had paid homage to silent cinema by describing the figure of Georges Mélies and creating a sequence that resumed precisely that of the Lumières.

The toy train will thus be the basis for Sammy Fabelman to start experimenting with his first film camera: curious that, once he grows up, his first “film” will however be a western, the founding genre of American narrative cinema which had absolute pioneer the famous “The Great Train Robbery” Of Edwin S. Porter of 1903. Crossing genres “The Fabelmans” crosses many genres going from war cinema (even in this current the Stars and Stripes productions, since the silent era, have always been fundamental) and coming to tell that youthful vein (relative to the high school period for the protagonist) which can refer to many films of the fifties and sixties, including that “West Side Story” of which Spielberg made an excellent remake in 2021. However, there is also a purely slapstick comedy gag from the 10s and 20s of the last century, when that little monkey appears in the family that can bring to mind”The cameraman” (look at this… another film about cinema) by Buster Keaton of 1928. Cinema becomes a mirror of the life of Fabelman/Spielberg and also becomes a means of trying to get to the truth (“cinema is truth 24 times a second”, said Jean-Luc Godard): the wonderful sequence of Sammy in slow motion, who discovers the maternal “betrayal”, can remind us of masterpieces such as “Blow up” Of Michelangelo Antonionia 1966 film that is fundamental for reflecting on the metaphysical nature of photography and consequently also of the cinematographic image.

Metacinema: John Ford and David Lynch

For these and many other reasons, “The Fabelmans” can really be included among those great meta-cinematographic films and in general capable of putting the Seventh Art at the center of every discourse: from the aforementioned “Sunset Boulevard” to masterpieces such as “The ball no. 13” of the same already mentioned Buster Keatonwithout forgetting films of the caliber of “Singing in the rain” or “Mulholland Drive”. We also use this last title as a link to talk about David Lynchone of the absolute masters of contemporary cinema, who gives a memorable performance in the role of John Fordthe one who in the film is defined as the greatest of all. The camera that scrutinizes the posters of his most famous feature films and then lingers on that of the monumental “The man who killed Liberty Valance” (1962), a film that Sammy and his friends went to see at the cinema some time before, is one of those moments that every cinephile can only madly love. As Ford, Lynch first plays with the cigar (the “fire” has always been one of the central elements of his cinema, just think of the beginning of “Wild at heart” or the many references in the saga of “Twin Peaks”) and then with a few words – as Ford used to do – he explains to the young Fabelman what cinema is and, perhaps, what life as a whole is. He teaches him and he teaches us all: it is enough to understand what right perspective to experience it fully and never banal.A bit like Charlot at the end of “Modern times”, Sammy Fabelman walks away and we see him walking towards the future or, better yet, towards the horizon. You just need to frame it in the right way…