This film came out the same year as George Lucas' magnum box-office hit, "Star Wars" (the popcorn-popular "Avatar" of its day) and, although this was hardly a "sleeper", this film encompasses a more subtle and spiritual theme about humankind and the dream of finding someone to communicate with over a vast universe than the more famous saga of Darth Vader and a certain Skywalker clan.
Richard Dreyfuss' character, Roy Neary, is a midwestern utility worker whose ordinary life is completely undone by a vision that drives him apart from his unbelieving wife and children and ultimately sends him out on a mission to understand a compulsion that is either a great discovery or a symptom of personal encroaching madness.
Luckily for him, a small group of other people totally unrelated to one another have this vision as well. A child has been kidnapped from his mother; fighter planes missing for thirty years suddenly reemerge in a desert hindreds of miles from their last reported position, in perfect working order. Thousands of people in India and China are experiencing visions that lead authorities to more questions than answers.
The US intelligence community and other international military and scientific groups are trying to keep a lid on these matters. Not knowing what to do with such a potential threat, governments mount a campaign of fear and secrecy to try and contain information. Fear of the Other is the crisis, not the aliens themselves.
This is a film with suspense and charged drama but, unlike most every science fiction film I had ever seen until this one, it presents extra-terrestrial life not as a "War of the Worlds" or "Star Wars" struggle of forces but as a scientific quest where life on other planets is not a conflict but a source of "contact" between beings no longer separated from the vacuum of space.
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Produced by Julia Phillips
Michael Phillips
Written by Steven Spielberg
Starring Richard Dreyfuss
François Truffaut
Melinda Dillon
Terri Garr
Music by John Williams
Cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond
Editing by Michael Kahn
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) November 16, 1977
Running time 135 minutes
What a terrific movies this is! I loved it, and there was a "Special Edition" that came out after, with more of the "alien life forms" I believe.
ReplyDeleteI liked this more than I did Star Wars!
Me too Jacquie. This for me was the real deal.
ReplyDeleteWell, the musician in me just loved the communication!
ReplyDeleteI have a very very special memory that occurred after a date to see this movie. (a close encounter :0) ) I guess that dates me age wise.
ReplyDeleteMy son was born in the same year that this came out! lol
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely loved this movie,Doug!!!
ReplyDeleteMy Mother still laughs at the scene where Roy builds Devils Tower with the mashed potatoes.
That was a rather clever plot element; I suppose musical tones are universal.
ReplyDeleteNow that is what a call the perfect "date movie" Mary Ellen. I trust you were not taken abroad a Mother Ship by aliens outside the theaters. I hear the medical examinations are rather taxing. :-)
ReplyDeleteI was seventeen when this came out and feel a bit dated myself. I had to wait a bit for the movie "The Goodbye Girl" to come out that year before I can recall anything close to "special memories". I guess there's just something about Richard Dreyfuss movies.
That remains one of my favorite scenes. Somebody told me a rumor that Steven Spielberg had taken some of it for the "Special Edition" but I was relieved he was wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe radar tracking station scene at the beginning of the movie is another classic scene in the story. When the traffic controller asks each airline pilot if they want to report a UFO, and there's that long pause...I was hooked after that.
So he had to wait for the DVD version then :-)
ReplyDeleteI saw this film myself Doug. I think it is interesting that these close encounters seem to rarely take place in the cafe's of Paris, where you may be joined by an alien at your table, but why not have a close encounter of that kind... you don't meet everyone who arrives by plane at the airport after all.
ReplyDeleteAll the secrecy and army deployment is quite unnecessary I think Doug, according to some people there's an alien in every shopping precinct, David Icke reckons Boxcar Willie was an alien. Perhaps the fourth kind of close encounter would be to give the last hour on your parking ticket to an alien as you leave the car park, ignoring the 'not transferable' condition stated in bold print upon it... in a cavalier, positively anarchic 'devil may care' sort of way, maybe?
But that leaves open the question which has plagued me since I saw Quatermas and the Pit when I was a child of 9 or 10 (and was traumatised by the total terror it inspired) and that is ....'are aliens really the devil'?......does this film definitively answer that question I wonder? What do you think Doug?
LOL at Boxcar Willie. I still don't know where that guy came from--he was all over American television with commercials in the 1980's talking about how he had somehow sold more records than The Beatles ...or was that Slim Whitman? In any case, I suspect if there is an alien life form amongst us he will avoid the more cosmopolitan trappings of The City of Light and look to make a fast buck running his own country-western themed show at a stop like Branson, Missouri, USA, a sort of Paris of Kitsch in the Ozark Mountains.
ReplyDeleteThe fourth encounter as I remember is when you give up your seat to an old Asian lady on a bus or transit car in San Francisco and she suddenly morphs into a cross between an angry wolverine and an insurance adjuster. The important thing there is not to panic.
'Quatermass and the Pit' scared me as a lad , too, AA. But it was the film version released in 1967 or 68 over here and was a color film remake I saw on a "Creature Features" show late night on the tube called "Seven Millions Years to Earth". Saw it a few years back and its still a good film. Recently some scientists speculated that organic life may have come from Mars, although perhaps not in a space ship that lay dormant under an abandoned tube station.
That film and another Hammer flick called "From the Earth to the Moon" with those moon people dressed like giant insects was quite scary. And the scariest thing was the idea from HG Wells that Brits were on the moon before Space Race Americans? Gee, wasn't getting hold of Gibraltar enough!
I doubt that the concept of devils amongst us would include aliens, AA. We have enough already in the higher echelons of power to worry about.
Is this the version you refer to?
I have never forgotten Hobbs Lane...Hob, Devil, Alien under tube station Nazi bombs and demolition crew...gulp...it's all coming back now Doug, I am behind the sofa....better leave the lights on tonight...better not have a banana before bed....or was that cheese ?.. indigestible stuff anyway makes you have nightmares, crocodiles under the bed aaaarrrrrrhg......wasn't childhood bloody awful?.....yes Doug that was the very one that freaked me out alright :-(
ReplyDeleteIndeed it was awful in many spots and stuff like this just contributed to the runaway imagination of childhood on a dark night in a room at the end of the hall. :-(
ReplyDeleteThe scariest thing I see now is the electric bill.
Sorry to bring up old memories, AA; forgot its about bedtime where you are. From what I've seen of clips of this program on You Tube, it would send any lad to bed with nightmares!
Well, since it was fiction, I'd rather they commincate with colors and music than weapons, really!
ReplyDeleteYes, Jacquie, I think that's part of the nearly-unique appeal of this movie--the happy idea that contact might not be a prelude to armed conflict.
ReplyDeleteThen came Independence Day! lol So much for "peace and love", eh?? lol
ReplyDeleteYes, that movie was back to the old 1950's "War of the Worlds" model. Not feeling the love at all in that one!
ReplyDeleteNo, but I sure liked it! lol Go figure, eh?
ReplyDeleteActually, in the beginning, when the aliens first showed up, we were friendly,in that movie. They fired first!
It was years after the movie came out before I actually saw it. I thought Richard Dryfuss did a good job. The mash potato scene was interesting. My son makes a similar mountain with his as well.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. I forgot that.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate to see it a couple times on the big screen. The photography was anotherthing that blew me away about the film. The early part of the movie with that starry night sky was amazing to me. When I saw it again a couple months back it was still impressive, which is saying something for special effects on a 33-year old movie.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny ( at first at least) to see Dreyfuss' character do what a kid would with his food. His character is obviously not in control of himself. It's well played.
Back then I thought Dryfuss did a tremendous job. It was one of the first of it's kind and it the movie was during an era that probably brought about dare I say it "ET". Still now when I watch it, it still captivates one. The idea of a code of sound communicating with aliens.
ReplyDeleteIronically how this has been brought up when just the other night the space shuttle landed and was watched by way of infared technology. How far we have come.
It's a film that I think has grown in stature and, yes, inspired a lot of other fine work. The 60's and '1970's produced a lot of outstanding American films that dealt with alienation and one or two people stepping out of society to find their own path. In a way 'Close Encounters' was the culmination of that individual pursuit--a stepping out by a few people into a frontier of possibilities.
ReplyDeleteAdmirable work by Dreyfuss here as an everyman pitted against a system that is driven by secrecy and fear of loss of power. And yet it is also a hopeful film. Hard to not be captivated indeed.
Dryfuss took a hiatus for a while, I have a book I forget the name of the author, but regardless of that it captivated people the best films in my own opinion were from this era we are seeing remakes or thread of most all of them now. He was right up there with Pacino, Deniro and all and yet he faded out for a while and now and then you do see him. "Contact", by Jodie Foster that was one that I would think the producers/filmmakers had done research with included "Close Encounters".
ReplyDeleteYet "Encounters" was much more.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen "Contact' yet, and I'm not sure why I didn't--I think in part I've always found Jodie Foster a rather cold presence in film.
ReplyDeleteI agree Dreyfuss could be included amongst those other fine actors.
I saw it, but a long time ago. I remember I liked it, but honestly, there are so few good Sci-Fi movies that I usually do like them.
ReplyDeleteYes, science fiction can be very ordinary unless there is a sense of wonder to it...or at least an idea that reflects skillfully back on our own modern lives. A couple of the "Star Trek" films managed to make the grade in my book.
ReplyDeleteSome space operas are just Westerns, really, with zap guns.
Well, I didn't care for movies like "Alien" and a lot of blood and gore stuff. I saw enough of that kind of thing in real life at work.
ReplyDeleteI love the Star-Trek movies, and I really liked the first 3 Star Wars movies. By the time they did more, I'd lost interest! lol
But then, I'm one of ten people that really liked "Tron"!!
i think the fourth "Star Trek" film, The Voyage Home" was the best. Saw a couple after that. And one 'Alien' movie was enough gore for me, for sure.
ReplyDeleteI've often wished they would make some movies of Asimov's Robot series. "I Robot" was great, I loved it, but I like his other 'bots a lot. I think I've read averthing he wrote, but I didn't understand all of the science. I just loved the mysteries!
ReplyDeleteI've often wished they would make some movies of Asimov's Robot series. "I Robot" was great, I loved it, but I like his other 'bots a lot. I think I've read averthing he wrote, but I didn't understand all of the science. I just loved the mysteries!
ReplyDeleteSorry, I double posted.
ReplyDeleteI've read "Cages of Steel" by Asimov. I' m surprised they haven't made more films from his work.
ReplyDelete