Amblin' is a short film released in 1968. It is the first completed film shot by Steven Spielberg on 35mm. The film is a short love story set during the hippie era of the late '60s, about a young couple making their way through the desert to a paradisical beach. The film is silent but is accompanied by an acoustic guitar-led soundtrack from beginning to end. A young guy, carrying a closely guarded guitar case, hooks up with a free spirited girl when hitchhiking across the desert in southern California en route to the Pacific coast. Along the way, the man engaged the girl in an olive spitting... contest and the girl initiates the guy into the joys of cannabis smoking and sex in a sleeping bag. Following the scene alluding to sexual intercourse, the young man is seen walking on the median of a road, which is perhaps symbolic. As the pair reach the beach, the guy frolics in the surf and the girl checks out the contents of his guitar case: a suit and tie, toothpaste, mouthwash, a roll of toilet paper and a copy of Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars. The girl smiles in bemusement, perhaps sensing all along that her companion was not the quintessential hippie that he appeared to be.
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