Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

What is the context?

Written and directed by Stephen Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in American theaters on November 16, 1977. Spielberg had already become a household name following the hugely successful release of Jaws only two years earlier, giving him the money and autonomy to make this film with significant creative control and few constraints from producers at 20^th Century Fox. With the release of this film only 6 months after George Lucas’ first Star Wars film, 1977 became a pivotal year in convincing audiences and critics alike that science fiction is more than just a playground for low-budget monster movies but rather a serious genre suited for artistic movie making. 

Close Encounters follows on the heels of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s which saw dramatic shifts in American attitudes toward two major themes in this film: outer space and imperialism.  Following the U.S.-Soviet space race and the Apollo 11 moon landing, space travel had suddenly shifted from fantasy to reality in the minds of Americans. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, imperialist attitudes and the colonization of the third world inspired protest and deep criticism.

Spielberg’s filmmaking borrows many techniques and stylistic elements from Classic Hollywood cinema, also called the golden age of cinema from the 1920s through the 1950s. Distinctive to this style is the human person as the thematic focal point. Comparable to the humanism of an Italian Renaissance painting, classic Hollywood films are about the characters and the choices they make as the story unfolds. There is also little attention that is drawn to the fact that what you are watching on screen is a film—there are no shaky camera shots or reminders that we are looking at scenes shot by a cameraman.

What is the artist communicating and how?

In the scene above, we see many of the themes and ideas Spielberg is attempting to communicate to his audience. In this scene, unexplainable lights from UFO's descend on the home of a mother and her young child. While the mother frantically shuts the doors, boards up the windows, and attempts to keep the visitors from entering, the child-Barry-attempts to let them in. Eventually, he is abducted. First off, this scene is terrifying! There are a few moments which Spielberg perfectly executes in order to fill this scene with suspense. The first is the overlay of a slow and sweet song as the terror unfolds. The mother, bumps into the record player and accidentally turns on “Chances Are” by Johnny Mathis. The song, pleasant and relaxing in sound, provides an unsettling feeling in the audience when juxtaposed with frightening, chaotic images. It is difficult to experience the sights and the sounds together and makes the audience even further uncomfortable.

The most successful tactic Spielberg uses to terrify the audience is to obscure the aliens from view. We, the audience, are never allowed to glimpse what these visitors look like, thereby holding us in suspense even further. We see blinding lights, we see from their perspective as they zoom down the chimney, but their appearance is left to our frightened imagination. The significance of their absence from view is the first theme Spielberg is communicating. Notice the difference in reactions demonstrated by the boy—Barry—and his mother. Barry wants to invite the visitors into the house while the mother shuts them out. The alien visitors can be seen as representative of the unknown. As adults, we identify with the mother’s dread in the presence of that which we know nothing about. However, the boy, innocent to cynicism and prejudices, welcomes the unknown with a sense of wonder. This is the second theme Spielberg communicated to the audience. Following the McCarthyism of the 1950’s and imperialism in Vietnam, the fear of the unknown is a familiar feeling to many Americans of the time. But Spielberg cautions against it by revealing the goodness of the visitors at the end of the film as well as the safe return of Barry.

Why is it beautiful?

Science fiction is my favorite film genre, because it allows unlimited opportunities for creativity and the tangling and untangling of philosophical ideas. This film is one of the grandfathers of serious, artistic science fiction in film, and thereby deserves high praise as a seminal work in its genre.

The images and visual effects in this film are masterfully made. The shots of the alien ships throughout the film are composed beautifully with a fancy toward luminescence. Whereas the super structures in Star Wars are mostly grey, metallic mammoths, the crafts in Close Encounters are brightly illuminated. And as we saw in the ending scene, they even play beautiful music!

The score, composed by John Williams, is also a masterpiece. Famously, Williams and Spielberg reversed the traditional order by which directors will film and edit each scene and then hand the film to the composer to create set music to it. Instead, Williams composed the score first and then Spielberg edited scenes according to the rises and falls of Williams' score.

The themes of wonder and fear, juxtaposed together in the scene referenced above, are basic and fundamental to any human experience. All people have a general fear of the unknown. It is the root of our common fears--death, the dark, and the future. The image of Barry swinging open the door and gold lights washing over him shows-this is one of my favorite shots of all time. The imagery of that scene as well as the mother ship pouring light and music over the mountain at the end of the film. These are more than the typical images from your average alien flick. These scenes are biblical in power and ancient in their scope. Spielberg helps us understand that the question--Are we alone?--is a deeply human question. It's both spiritual and sociological. And if we consider his classic Hollywood influence, we can gather that Spielberg, by obscuring the unknown and perhaps unknowable visitors of the film, intends to place the thematic focus not on the aliens but the humans who encounter them.