Steven Spielberg regrets his worst film

Steven Spielberg never makes mistakes. At least that is what many fans of the director, who has written himself into film history like no other with masterpieces such as Jaws and ET – The Extra-Terrestrial, think. But he himself regrets parts of his own works. Among other things, the War film comedy 1941 – Where is the way to Hollywood?, which was met with catastrophic initial reactions. Steven Spielberg’s war comedy 1941 is considered one of his worst films

Set in California in 1941, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A submarine with Japanese and German soldiers (including Toshirô Mifune and Christopher Lee) wants to destroy Hollywood but can’t find it. Meanwhile, the US defenders around Sergeant Frank Tree (Dan Aykroyd) and Captain Kelso (John Belushi) leave a trail of devastation behind them out of pure paranoia.

Watch the English trailer for 1941 here:

The film received mediocre to poor reviews when it was released in 1979, which praised the visual effects and soundtrack, but often criticized the clumsy dramaturgy (via Metacritic ). Empire still considers 1941 to be Spielberg’s worst film. According to Variety, the director himself also admits to making serious mistakes during the filming of the war comedy:

[Das Studio] gave me an unlimited budget for 1941. And then the shooting took 178 days because I directed even the smallest details. That was the worst mistake one could have made. Still, I had a great time on set. […] But the first time I showed the film in a theater, you could have heard a pin drop. [Es war] the first comedy in history that made no one laugh.

The audience’s vitriolic reaction continued to haunt the director even many years later. “It was as if I had committed a war crime“, Far Out Magazine quotes the filmmaker from the documentary Spielberg.

However, as the figures from The Numbers suggest, 1941 was not a financial flop. And Spielberg’s regret over his mistakes during filming should be limited: after all, he followed the comedy with titanic masterpieces such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

Podcast: 8 brilliant westerns that are worth watching, and not just for Yellowstone fans

Whether thanks to series hits like Yellowstone and 1883 or Tarantino masterpieces like Django Unchained: the Western genre is experiencing a popularity like never before. For all fans, we have selected the best Westerns that you can stream right now.

The 8 Western highlights presented on Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and MUBI include both absolute classics and lesser-known insider tips. There is something for every genre fan: Our recommendations cover a full 55 years of Western history between 1964 and 2019.