What's old is new - a sentiment with which surely film-maker Robert Zemeckis would surely agree. In 1990, the summer movie season kicked off with the joyful and inspiring science fiction western Back to the Future Part 3. In summer '99, we have Wild Wild West a science fiction western. The nine years that have elapsed have seen Robert Zemeckis the director of Back to the Future Part 3 build on all the promise he showed in the late 1970s and mid 1980s. He has become a masterful direc tor of mass market movies, investing all of them with wit, satire, energy, a satisfying world view and a widely acknowledged mastery for integrating visual effects with narrative. In his marvellous film reference book, The Biographical Encyclopaedia of Film, David Thomson writes: " No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic or narrative purpose...Zemeckis has done nothing that is not fresh, startling, difficult or intriguing... This may be a great director in the making. "

Great , indeed, yet consider how low-key Zemeckis is as a ' media personality '. His 1995 Oscar was probably his most prominent moment as a director outside of actually making a movie, a process Zemeckis has a knack of playing with. Remember the decision to shoot Back to the Future Parts 2 and 3 back-to-back Well, it seems he's trumped it this time around with his split schedule for the 2000 release Castaway, allowing him to direct What Lies Beneath in the Castaway break. Both Castaway and WLB are significant as they make good on a hope Spielberg expressed in a Premiere ( November 1989 ) article on BTTF Part 2 when he said that hopefully Zemeckis would " come home " again after completing the trilogy - home being a future collaboration with Spielberg. WLB and Castaway are both Dreamworks movies and WLB is based on a Spielberg story. It would not be overstating the case to say these two projects have been eagerly awaited since their announcement last year.

What does seem safe to say from the scant information available right now is that Castaway may perhaps be in the mould of Forrest Gump and Contact ( maybe Castaway will have as beautiful a desert island as that which Ellie finds herself on at the end of Contact ) whilst What Lies Beneath will perhaps occupy some of the territory staked out in Death Becomes Her, Go to the Head of the Class ( from Amazing Stories ), Tales from the Crypt and the Zemeckis produced The Frighteners. As producer Frank Marshall said in an excellent 1992 British documentary on Zemeckis the director has a real love of the macabre. So far this has really only come to life through comedy. Perhaps WLB will be an all out dramatic supernatural themed movie - continuing the Spielberg tradition established in Poltergeist, Always , Casper ( okay, so that was a family movie ) and this summer's The Haunting ( catch Robert Wise's original if you can. ) For Zemeckis, no matter how fantastic or tall-tale the story is he is always able to invest it with a recognisable humanity.

The Films

Having written the screenplay for Spielberg's manic 1941 ( 1979 ) audiences were given some clue to the kind of tone that would permeate so many films that Zemeckis went on to direct ( and co write with Bob Gale ) and produce. In I Wanna Hold Your Hand ( 1978 ), Zemeckis' debut feature, a group of young American women frantically attempt to see the Beatles. Zemeckis regular Wendy Jo Sperber puts in a top flight performance - just recall the girls going mad in the record store when they think they have seen the Fabolous Four pass through. In fact, it is only a cardboard cut-out being carried through. Brief, but strong though this very visual gag is it precedes an ongoing Zemeckis motif of the doub le. In the hilarious Used Cars ( much more assured and satisfying film than I Wanna Hold Your Hand ) the major plot point revolves around the duelling used car salesman brothers with whom Rudy ( Kurt Russell ) is entwined. In the Back to the Future movies of course Zemeckis , as in Used Cars with Jack Warden, has the same actors play different family roles - the brothers Luke and Roy L. Fuchs. This motif is part of Zemeckis' larger game plan across the body of his work as he explores the relationship between fantasy and reality ( not an uncommon movie theme ) and how those moments of escape and the larger-than-life in fact illuminate our more day to day lives ( Terry Gilliam often journeys into the same country ). It's a theme that Spielberg also returns to time and again. And yes, whilst Zemeckis is very much a protege of Spielberg their tone and style is different. Sure there are similarities ( the love of fantasy, the victory of youth over age, the snap, crackle and pop of their action sequences , the director-composer collaboration, seeing the essentially positive side of life ) but Zemeckis is a little more cynical as a filmmaker - he allows an often unexpected darkness to creep in - recall how much the critics loved the darkness of Back to the Future Part 2.

In Used Cars ( described by Pauline Kael as " Like 1941, it has a carnival atmosphere, and yes, there is something of a pinball machine about it. " ) , Zemeckis ( with long-time writing partner Bob Gale ) construct a story about two duelling used car lots and infuse it with a lot of black humour with a distinctly cartoony edge - such as the scene with the pet dog and the brick under the wheel. In this scene Zemeckis stacks the unravelling chaos brilliantly as he proved even better at particularly in the Back to the Future movies. As the tightly constructed storyline begins to pay off through farce and very broad, on target humour ( the heart attack of the good brother, the bungled local tv ad with the topless dancers ) the film movies like a locomotive towards its climax which predates the images of Back to the Future Part 3 with two hundred and fifty cars thundering across an old west landscape. Protagonist Rudy Russo ( what a marvel lously corny name ) by this point has come to prove his value as a person, leading a rag-tag army of young drivers in a motorcade crusade for the honour of the little guy. Despite its apparently lowbrow setting and subject matter Used Cars carries a brilliantly packaged bundle of scenes and sequences tied to a very clearly told human comedy. Significantly, the movie was edited by Michael Kahn - Spielberg's editor.

Both I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars were box office failures and Zemeckis did not have another feature until Romancing the Stone in 1984. released in the same summer as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom many regard Stone as a superior adventure movie. It is more grounded in a believable emotional reality and this project really demonstrated Zemeckis' skill - he can sell you the wildest most crazy idea but it doesn't have to be realistic, it just has to be believable on its own terms. Although he was working from another writer's screenplay ( the late Diane Thomas ) Zemeckis imbued it with his won world view and storytelling flourishes. For all those would be filmmakers out there one of the great things about any Zemeckis film is just how visual they are. I'm not talking about nifty effects here, I'm talking about camera placement and movement. Look at the opening moments of Romancing the Stone and Back to the Future - we learn about the characters by being taken by the camera around their surroundings. Only then do we get a snatch of dialogue and the characters themselves moving and performing. Zemeckis is a master of structure - one of the very best ever - everything he sets up has an eventual payoff. There is nothing lazy in his storytelling. No story point is wasted - even when you wonder why you are being shown certain scenes ( the 1985 dinner in the original Back to the Future, for example ). Later in the movie think how much of a kick we get when we see how the dinner conversation references begin to pay off. For this writer, Back to the Future is perhaps the very best real world fantasy movie ever made.

In Romancing the Stone , Zemeckis made a very funny and emotionally satisfying film about a two people learning to live in the real world as they go on a treasure hunt ( Zemeckis and Gale wrote their own gold hunt film, Trespass ). Joan Wilder moves beyond the safety of her desk, Jack Colt learns to live with someone else an share an adventure. The film is filled with Zemeckis's trademark visual gags - the best of which is the cutting the heels and throwing the suitcases, and what's great is they all contribute to character. The film's opening scene set in the Old West predates Future Part 3 and demonstrates the director's ability to move between pastiche and parody with a real light touch. In that scene prior to the mudslide and its cheap sight gag pay off (funny though ) we learn about Colt's basic attitude and Wilder's expectations. The film also establishes Zemeckis's action directing credentials - notably in the chase down to the waterfall with its pulsating Silvestri score. As his other films, Zemeckis allows us to see the face of the actor portraying the charter in the moment of jeopardy and so sustains our emotional investment. We see Jack make the run and jump onto the car as it careens down the hill. As with s ubsequent films, Stone is about two mismatched souls joining forces to accomplish a seemingly impossible task - not an unfamiliar Hollywood theme (and indeed , for a filmmaker anyway it's probably a metaphor about the moviemaking process).

With Stone, Zemeckis was seen to have arrived in commercial terms and with back to the Future he began to stake his claim as one of the best ever filmmakers of science fiction and fantasy material. Back to the Future is packed with riches and what visual effects there are all contribute to an emotional affect - just think about the race against time at Part 1's end where the tension is piled on with anxiety and big laughs. Perhaps the original Back to the Future is one of the most perfect movies ever to come out of Hollywood. The film's world view is undeniably attractive. Marty McFly is desperately in need of a positive, go-getting father figure and he finds it in Doc Brown. The Doc embodies an ideal father figure in a somewhat whacked out disguise - a kind of suburban Merlin. He helps Marty unlock his potential - signalled from the outset by al lowing him to use the amp. Throughout the series, of course, the father-son relationship between Doc and Marty is explored - not in any heavy-going, arduous way but with enough integrity and thought to be an evident part of the story. Recall their Part 3 chat about heart and mind by the railtrack at night. The two men give one another so much - think owe emotive their farewell is in Part 1 under the clocktower and then how relieved we are when Doc awakes to reveal a bullet proof vest.

The Back to the Future movies are brilliantly cohesive, shifting between zestful optimism and a wise acknowledgement of the darker side of human endeavour. The trilogy allowed Zemeckis to develop his style, particularly in terms of camera placement which alerts every time to shifts in the drama or is used to highlight very particular details ( just watch the save the clocktower scene at the start of Part 1 ). In publicity about the movies Zemeckis love of a mobile camera is always cited but it is used for more than just pizzazz. Dean Cundey maybe the finest fantasy cinematographer - witness his John C arpenter and Spielberg collaborations ) and in the Back to the Future movies he makes very real the world's lightness and dark. In terms of camera movement, recall Marty's arrival in Hill valley in 1955 on a Saturday morning We really feel as though we are sharing in his discovery of this new world. In Part 3 this moment of revelation is even clearer when the camera booms up over Hill Valley rail station to reveal the young town. Throughout the series, Zemeckis and Cundey plunge us into the action in a way that reminds of Spielberg's work. The skateboard chase is still a supremely edited action sequence with as much as pace and verve to it as the truck chase in Raiders, and the same skill is given to the train chase at the close of Part 3. What adds even more to these sequences are that the emotional stakes are so high - Marty getting home and Clara declaring her love for Doc at the last, heart thumping moment. One wonders what Zemeckis would have made of the climaxes of Cocoon and Waterworld had he directed them, which I believe was once almost the case. Perhaps Castaway is finally Zemeckis' chance to make a film involving lots of water.

The Back to the future movies, then, embrace the idea of learning from the past and considering the future but they also advocate a passionate engagement with the world in every way. The Doc's energy is contagious as he seeks to discover the perils, possibilities and pitfalls of life. The relentless energy of the movies is the relentless synergy the films say we should put into our lives. The message of anything being possible if you put your mind s to it is old and true but it comes through with such conviction in the Future movies because of the familiar setting and familiar characters the fantasy is told through. The film is a great one for teenagers because it says that eventually you'll find your place and that you won't always be the little guy - when Marty trips Biff in Part 1 we share Marty's defiance. When George decks Biff later on the circle is complete - ( symbolic ) father has taught son has taught ( natural ) father. And the ending of Part 1 is still one of the great upbeat endings of all - as a thirteen year old this writer was ecstatic when the film ended not only with the car blasting off but with the rallying cry to the audience to set your mind to a task and you'll accomplish anything. That call to pursuing our own personal, real life adventures stayed with me from that moment - if Zemeckis and Gale had never made another film that would be enough of a reason to be eternally grateful to them.

If time travel requires a big suspension of disbelief what about a story about 1940s gumshoe teaming up with a walking and talking, emoting cartoon rabbit As in all his films up to 1988, Zemeckis again had opposites attracting to pull off an audacious goal. As in the Future movies, Zemeckis makes clear his delight in recreating an historical era, with the historical phase being a means to considering the past-future relationship. Judge Doom wants a freeway where Toontown is. At the time of the film's release, some critics and commentators noted the film's valuable engagement with racism as the animated characters deal with warped justice and a general atmosphere of being marginalised. For all its sp ectacle, craziness and chaos and comedy the film upholds values of tolerance, companionship and the power and necessity of humour in all our lives. Eddie Valiant may not seem like a hero but his finer side shines through, particularly when he learns the power of play and invention - recall his dance in the warehouse a the end. Once again, the film benefits from an Alan Silvestri score which evokes Carl Stalling's legendary efforts whilst still being able to let the Silvestri sound come through. Zemeckis mobile camera achieve anew subtlety in this film. Once upon a time the camera would have been locked off for those scenes combining animation with live action performers (witness Mary Poppins ). In Roger Rabbit, the camera moves - it tracks and pans with a healthy disregard for technological implications. In doing so, the ' toons' tooniness is - in a productive way - made less of an issue. They are just there in the world.

Death Becomes Her was Zemeckis first theatrical attempt to create a somewhat macabre piece of work. Again, his technique came shining through. Camera placement was as subtle and economical as ever. Recall the pan around the plastic surgeon's room as Meryl Streep visits for the first time. And the foreground / background action when Bruce Willis finds Meryl with her head in a spin. As he frets in the foreground on the phoney she awakes from the dead ( somewhat like Judge Doom ). A simple but effective use of dramatic irony - the ' it's behind you ' factor.

To my mind Death is the least satisfying Zemeckis film of all. There are strong moments, strong comic performances but to some degree one wonders if the idea would not have been better as a half hour piece rather like something he would have included in his Tales from the Crypt series.

Death Becomes Her, though, marked a change in Zemeckis career profile. He seemed to start to redefine his work after that, going from ostensibly simple, bubblegum movies to material with more substance. In 1994 he achieved his biggets commercial success with Forrest Gump which as he acknowledges has none of the conventional Hollywood narrative devices of a ticking clock or obvious antagonist. Here i n Britain, the film was met with some disdain as being too reactionary and somehow too American. Clearly the film has a definite American appeal - taking as it does key moments in modern American history as a framework for the story. More interesting though is the inherent drama of the film rather how it reflects a time and place. That's often the only way a film's worth is judged and to my mind that can be a very limiting approach and way into a film. It denies films the chance to be examined as films in and of their own right. When you listen to a piece of music for the first time your first response isn't about when the song was made and how it relates to that moment in time but whether or not it worked for you as a piece of music.

Gump is yet one more in Zemeckis line of everyday American heroes - al his movies celebrate American ideas and the American spirit, whether its Rudy Russo , Doc Brown or Forrest Gump crossing their own individual frontiers . In a less generic way, Forrest Gump is as much a time travel piece as Back to the Future with Gump's self understanding and reco gnition of his place in the world clarifying and opening as he progresses through it. Just like Marty and Doc, Eddie and Roger, Jack and Joan , Forrest negotiates the travails of life with another person at his side. The film encourages its audience to partake in the world and to see their life as valuable people with arguably bigger lives. Everyone matters is the movie's bass line - it as important to mow the sports field as it is to be a war hero. You could se this attitude of the movie as celebrating life's absurdity or as being a very compassionate and refreshing world view for a mainstream Hollywood movie to take. For all his successes and adventures they befall Forrest by accident - he does not set out to achieve anything in the classic Hollywood sense. Perhaps the film is more truthful than we know - what counts is how we deal with life's adventure rather than what the adventure itself is. Forrest has an almost Zen-like presence, albeit one flavoured with the occasional Dr Pepper. And who can blame him

As with his other movies, Zemeckis technique steps up a notch, building on all the tricks he has deployed before. He has said himself that a close up is as fake as the most lavish visual effect and this is true. In Gump, Zemeckis harnesses the wide ranging sweep of recent American history and Forrest's role in it to a story told in close up - recall Forrest's face when he first sees his son. Or the simple shot where the camera slowly tracks towards Forrest as he sits silently at home after his mother's death. As in all his movies, Zemeckis' camera moves with race and ease often quietly expanding the frame and introducing details of story, metaphor and atmosphere. While the film is significantly different in tone to any of Zemeckis previous movies, marking I think an effort on his part to develop a new directorial identity, the film still contains several excellent visual gags -notably the shrimp boat piling into the jetty as Forrest unknowingly chats with Dan.

Gump is probably the closest Zemeckis has come to rendering a narrative that touches on the archetypal hero's journey - I am not even going to begin to go into that here and n ow. People are probably sick of hearing the definition of it over the past couple of months (and years ) but it holds true. Gump begins as an innocent, makes a journey that tests him before returning him home where he can share what he has learnt.

In 1997, Zemeckis returned to directing ( having recently produced the excellent, frenzied horror-comedy The Frighteners, directed by Peter Jackson who evidently shares the same cinematic and storytelling sensibility as Zemeckis ) with Contact which in essence developed the overall feeling and outlook of Forrest Gump. No matter how far Ellie may have journeyed across the stars she never really left home - it was always with her. The film received very favourable reviews upon its release and to date it remains Zemeckis' first all out drama. Once again, though the traits of his more whacked out stories remain ( thankfully ) intact. Ellie allies herself with a team of scientists - more naturalistic cousins of good old Doc Brown. In Zemeckis' films enthusiasm and commitment are important, positive values and Ellie and her team display this repeatedly. As with Gump, Zemeckis quite openly maps out a hero's journey. The film does recall Close Encounters of the Third Kind but ultimately its climax is a little more ambiguous about the physical reality of where Ellie has travelled to. When I first saw the movie I was pleasantly surprised by just how bold the film was in not presenting us with what might have been the expected denouement.

In terms of visual effects the film's climax evokes the moment of hitting 88mph as Ellie's pod crackles and sparks whilst it passes through a new frontier and Zemeckis really places us in her hot seat. Whilst this very obvious but powerful effect is playing out Zemeckis maintains full control of his narrative and elaborates on his theme of pursuing a dream when young Ellie's face gently flashes across older Ellie's face. Amidst the spectacle and terror of Ellie's odyssey, the film very briefly reminds of us of where the journey began - in the heart and mind of a young girl dreaming in her bedroom. David Morse's performance as Ellie's father is one of the best Zemeckis has ever directed and the character's positive father figure status echoes Doc Brown who cares just as much about Marty.

Through the digitally revised footage of President Clinton, Contact allows Zemeckis to once again play with his motif of / what is real and what is not as he did in Gump and even way back in Used Cars ( with the twin brothers ). All of Zemeckis characters must find a way to determine the real from the fake, in doing so learning more about themselves and their place in the world.

And now, in the summer 1999 many film fans are savouring the news that in 2000 Robert Zemeckis will ride again - twice. Next summer we will be treated to the supernatural drama of What Lies Beneath and at Christmas Castaway. It seems safe to suggest that above and beyond the visual spectacle of each film will be stories of everyday heroes struggling with an extraordinary experience and in doing so coming to understand themselves more. We already know, it seems , the premise of each film. What is so satisfying though is that the human dilemma is made so clear in the short premise fo r each film. Beneath does not seem to have much room for all out comedy so it will be exciting to see how Zemeckis draws on his affinity for the macabre and uses it to ratchet up the tension and fear (I can imagine the camera angles and Silvestri's score right now) whilst also offering up some story elements around family and loss ( remember the movie is based on a Spielberg story ) and Castaway may ( metaphorically ) take Zemeckis back into a particular Gump sequence and expand on it - Gump's lonely run across America will in Castaway be about one man coping with his aloneness on a desert island. And who hasn't felt marooned at one point or another in their life As before Zemeckis seems destined to tell two new stories which, for all their tall tale qualities, will be firmly and reassuringly rooted in feelings common to every movie goes out there in the dark.