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CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
1977
DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG
1:00 PM CARPENTER PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
(137
minutes) Writer, Director: Steven Spielberg. Cinematographer: Vilmos
Zsigmond. Special Photographic Effects: Douglas Tumbull. Producers:
Julia Phillips, Michael Phillips. Additional Camera: Douglas Slocombe
(India sequence); William A. Fraker (added American scenes). Editor:
Michael Kahn. Music: John Williams. Starring: Richard Dreyfuss,
Francois Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Carey Guffey, Bob Balaban.
Smash in, after the opening titles -- a desert sandstorm fills the
screen. Strange lights appear, revolving in an otherworldly formation.
Is it a flying saucer?
Nope -- a landrover. Those beams are its headlights. But that first
tickle of uncertainty is a trademark tease by director Steven
Spielberg. Nobody had ever seen anything quite like Close Encounters of the Third Kind when it first opened. Generally speaking, UFOs in classic, Cold War era films such as War of the Worlds, Earth versus the Flying Saucers, The Day the Earth Stood Still
were characterized by a warlike hostility. But those films were made by
men and women who lived through World War II, and shared an
understandable fear, post-Hiroshima, that the world would either blow
itself up or mutate out of recognition.
For Spielberg, who came of age in that postwar wave of kids who
absorbed these nuclear jitters with their breakfast cereal between
reruns of Leave It to Beaver, outer space and its residents were less a
source of terror than a hoped-for means of transcending earthly life. Close Encounters
was thus not “a children’s film” so much as the quasi-religious hymn of
a generation. The blue collar dad played by Richard Dreyfuss becomes
obsessed with seeking truthful answers, after he experiences a
mysterious “Close Encounter” with beings from outer space. He behaves
wildly, like a man in the throes of a spiritual conversion. He loses
his job, but couldn’t care less. His wife (Teri Garr) and their
children all think he’s gone mad, and desert him.
The only other human being within reach who understands what he’s going
through is a young Mom (Melinda Dillon) whose sweet-spirited little boy
(Carey Guffey) has entered into a special communication with the Beings
From Beyond and is abducted. As they search for answers together, they
are drawn to a visually dramatic mesa in remotest Wyoming, and there
encounter the French UFO expert Lacombe (played magnificently by French
filmmaker, Francois Truffaut). He must sadly, officially, try to block
them from what’s about to happen, even as his deepest sympathies are
with them. A suspenseful climactic chase follows -- one which pays open
homage to Hitchock’s North by Northwest.
The Disney song “When You Wish Upon a Star” also audibly haunts the
luminous, euphoric encounter in which the earthlings greet, and are
greeted.
Vilmos Zsigmond, this year’s artist in residence, was the
cinematographer. Quite apart from the elegance and power of this
movie’s widescreen compositions in their own right, Close Encounters
has a historic importance technically because Zsigmond, working in
close alliance with effects master Douglas Trumbull (2001; Silent
Running), made pioneering use of computerized “motion control” in the
camerawork, so they could create special effects in the middle of a
pan, or in complex moving master shots, thus adding ever-more layered,
ever-more thrilling illusions of reality -- which were up to then
unthinkable.
