CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)

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FIRST CONTACT: Steven Spielberg drew on memories of the kinder, gentler alien invader films from the 1950s, notably The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), for his Disney-like depiction of spiritual star visitors, while employing state-of-the-art F/X for a vivid sense of high-tech grandeur. Courtesy: Columbia Pictures.

CREDITS

Columbia Pictures; Steven Spielberg, dir.; Spielberg, Hal Barwood, Jerry Belson, John Hill, Matthew Robbins, scr.; Julia Phillips, Michael Phillips, pro.; John Williams, mus.; Vilmos Zsigmond, John A. Alonzo, cin.; Michael Kahn, ed.; Joe Alves, prod. design; Daniel A. Lomino, art dir.; Ralph McQuarrie, conceptual artwork; Roy Arbogast, Kevin Pike, F/X; Carlo Rambaldi, extraterrestrial realization; Robert Short, alien designer (1980); Larry Albright, mothership neon light effects; Peter Anderson, special visual effects; Gregory L. McMurry, visual effects (1980); Christopher S. Ross, mothership model maker (1980); 135 min. (theatrical print), 132 min. (special edition), 137 min. (director’s cut); Color; 2.20:1.

CAST

Richard Dreyfuss (Roy Neary); François Truffaut (Claude Lacombe); Teri Garr (Ronnie Neary); Melinda Dillon (Jillian Guiler); Bob Balaban (David Laughlin); Cary Guffey (Barry Guiler); J. Patrick McNamara (Project Leader); Warren J. Kemmerling (Wild Bill); Roberts Blossom (Farmer); Philip Dodds (Jean Claude); Lance Henriksen (Robert); Carl Weathers (Military Policeman); J. Allen Hynek (Himself); Howard K. Smith (Newscaster).

MOST MEMORABLE LINE

It looked like an ice cream cone.

ROY NEARY, ATTEMPTING TO DESCRIBE THE ALIEN SPACECRAFT

BACKGROUND

Close Encounters premiered on November 16, 1977, fewer than six months following Star Wars Episode IV. Despite the success of Lucas’s movie, the film industry held its collective breath. Star Wars had, from its opening image, featured not only spacecraft but also action, rating as a space opera; Close Encounters, in comparison, offered a realistic sci-fi film, featuring only fleeting glimpses of an alien craft until the spectacular ending. Might a public intoxicated with Star Wars find this film, however brilliant, a letdown? The answer was no. Shot at a then-considerable budget (slightly less than $20 million), Close Encounters brought in more than $300 million internationally. Clearly, Star Wars had not been a one-time phenomenon and the sci-fi renaissance could now proceed.

THE PLOT

Alien spacecraft, circling Earth, are spotted by several people. In the United States, these include an average suburban father, Roy Neary, and Jillian, a single mom whose son has been abducted. Soon a growing number of citizens demand to know what’s going on, but government officials remain mum. Gradually, an “elect” group develops, members experiencing mental images of a structure reaching to the heavens. One by one, they realize they’ve been summoned to Devils Tower, where extraterrestrials will soon make first contact. As the “enlightened ones” attempt to reach the location, only a few arrive to greet the riders from the stars.

THE FILM

Identifying “the film” is difficult in that three cuts are now available. Box office success allowed Spielberg (1946–) to finally film several sequences initially deemed “too expensive” for the original. One, in which a huge ship is revealed to be relocated to the middle of a desert (presumably by aliens), would be hailed as a welcome addition. In another sequence, Spielberg extended the ending, allowing the viewer to see the full interior of the mothership. This produced impressive F/X work, but many fans insisted that less had been more, that the additional footage robbed them of imaginative collaboration as to such details. For the second version, Spielberg listened to critics, cutting much of the “excessive” footage that shows Neary building his own Devils Towers out of everything from mashed potatoes to clay. Yet, the film does not work so well without this charmingly comical sequence. The director’s cut offers a compromise between the two earlier versions, and, to this day, sci-fi buffs argue as to which they prefer.

THEME

Spielberg’s workaholic father was not around much during his son’s childhood, and his parents divorced when he was nineteen. Consequently, Spielberg came to consider his mother the primary influence on his early life. Not surprisingly, then, many of his movies deal with the subject of single motherhood. While Jillian here embodies such a person, similar characters appear in E.T. (1982) and The Color Purple (1985). Likewise, the plot point of children forcibly removed from their mothers, single or married, recurs in Poltergeist (1982), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Jurassic Park (1993), and Schindler’s List (1993). By featuring a continuing personal vision in films that could not be more diverse in subject matter and style, Spielberg achieves the distinction of being honored as a true auteur: the film director who is not only a highly skilled entertainer but also a true artist, with a consistent though evolving vision of life.

TRIVIA

The still relatively young Spielberg relied heavily on homages to films and TV shows that had an impact on his imagination as a child. In Close Encounters, the dream-like quality of the boy’s experiences during a semi-surreal night in the country recalls Invaders from Mars (1953). The descent of an alien craft over Jillian’s home is similar to a sequence in which the lead characters are trapped in an isolated house in The War of the Worlds (1953). The cloud that then descends on the boy resembles the one in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). The “normal” neighborhood in which Neary’s family lives recalls those in many Twilight Zone episodes, particularly “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” which Spielberg has claimed is among his favorites. The cartoon that Neary watches on TV includes the final line of The Thing from Another World (1951): “Watch the skies!” The notion of aliens as benign—even perhaps saviors, their arrival a kind of Second Coming—is derived from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and It Came from Outer Space (1953). Not all of Spielberg’s references reach that far back, however: when the mothership first circles Devils Tower, Star Wars’s R2-D2 is just barely visible inside.