I can't believe you just compared Spielberg to Hitchcock. For that matter, I can't believe you compared the Spielberg of the 1970s to the Spielberg who has lived in a bubble of his own design for the last quarter century.
He's up there. You can take one of his movies to a film school to teach cutting, editing, and general principles of direction. Frankly his natural command of the medium approaches the classical Arts.