Which living artist has been nominated most times for an Oscar? The answer isn’t Steven Spielberg (with 24 nominations), but his long-term collaborator composer John Williams, with a record 54. The Fabelmans, Spielberg’s most personal film, seemed a fitting finale for the duo in 2022. But Spielberg persuaded Williams, now 94, to write the music for his latest sci-fi blockbuster Disclosure Day, their 30th film together.
Williams has worked with other directors, creating scores for era-defining franchises from George Lucas’s Star Wars (who would Darth Vader be without The Imperial March?) to Harry Potter. But it is his partnership of more than 50 years with Spielberg that has changed cinema history, with hits including Jaws, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. “John Williams has been the single most significant contributor to my success as a film‑maker,” Spielberg has said.
Jedi, dinosaurs, wizards and now extraterrestrials in the form of animals – Williams has spent decades making alien worlds believable, while the haunting melodies for Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan make history devastatingly personal. From the two-note ostinato of Jaws to the operatic flute solo in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – so difficult that it is used in orchestra auditions – his work is as far‑ranging technically as thematically.
His music has been performed everywhere from Glastonbury to the Proms, and played by leading orchestras around the world. But the composer is dismissive of his work as high art. “I never liked film music very much,” he told his biographer Tim Greiving last year, calling the idea that it should be performed in concert halls alongside classical masterpieces “a mistaken notion”.
In the golden age of Hollywood, composers such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Britten were as revered as the directors. Eisenstein edited sequences to suit Prokofiev’s score. Today they have to compete for the audience’s attention. “The music has to cut through this noise of effects,” Williams has said. “The tunes need to speak probably in a matter of seconds.” The first few bars of his scores are instantly recognisable, yet he is not a household name as Spielberg is.
No one understands the relationship between images and sound better than Williams. His music can provoke a visceral response from a clear blue sea. His scores provided a soundtrack for a generation. He taught us what terror sounds like (two repeating notes – E and F). Whose heart didn’t thump before the shark appears, or soar as the BMXs take flight in E.T., or break from the first violin strains of the Schindler’s List theme (Spielberg’s favourite in Williams’s oeuvre)?
In Disclosure Day, CGI has replaced the mechanical puppet of Jaws. But no technology can replicate the creative force of two extraordinary talents coming together. For three decades, Spielberg and Williams have urged us to consider the possibility that there might be something bigger than us out there. They have inspired fear and joy. Together, they have allowed us to believe the impossible, to make a leap of imagination and empathy. Disclosure Day might be their last film together. At a time when both film and music are under threat from artificial intelligence, their legacy is a reminder of the magic of collaboration. As one of the characters in The Fabelmans says: “Movies are dreams that you never forget.”