Bridge of Spies got the crowd to its feet at its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, with the audience giving a standing ovation to director Steven Spielberg and a cast led by Tom Hanks as the credits rolled.

“Half this movie is shot in New York,” Spielberg told the audience. “The first half of this movie I dedicate to you. And then when I go to Berlin in a month, I’ll dedicate the second half to them.”

New Yorkers will recognise familiar theatre faces up on the screen – Mark Rylance (who plays captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel), Scott Shepherd, Billy Magnussen – alongside the likes of Alan Alda and Amy Ryan. And it sounds like no one in the cast wanted to let Spielberg down.

“It’s a little terrifying,” said Wooster Group alum Shepherd, who plays a CIA officer. “I expected Spielberg to have made so many films that now he’s a little jaded. But his energy on set is infectious. It’s buoyant.”

“Just be prepared and show up. That’s what I learned from Tom and Steven,” Magnussen said. “Do your work to prepare and then have a good time with it.”

Not even Hanks, who has worked with Spielberg on multiple projects (including Saving Private Ryan and Catch Me If You Can), wants to disappoint the director.

“You don’t ever want to find yourself making the last Steven Spielberg movie,” Hanks said in a post-screening Q&A, right before the cast headed off to an intimate soirée at the Museum of Natural History. “You really want to please the man.”

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