Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters is a landmark science fiction film, not only for its special effects, but also for its portrayal of extraterrestrial beings as benign, even kind, which was a sharp departure from the evil monster characterizations of most earlier films. It popularized a number of UFO motifs, many of which had earlier been reported in conjunction with UFO sightings, such as alien abduction, small and thin aliens (Greys), and UFOs covered in lights rather than the disc shapes popular in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2007, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

Plot

In the Sonoran Desert, a group of scientific researchers including Lacombe (Truffaut) and Laughlin (Balaban) discover a lost squadron of World War II aircraft-all of which are still intact and perfectly operational. In Air Traffic Control at the Indianapolis Center, Flights AE-31 and TW-517 have a near miss with an unidentified aircraft described as being "Very brilliant, bright lights, white to red...colours very striking." In Muncie, Indiana, Three year-old Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey) is led out of his house when his toys start operating automatically, forcing his mother Jillian (Melinda Dillon) to chase after him. During a large scale blackout, Indiana electrical lineman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) experiences a close encounter of the second kind, and is soon caught in a motorized pursuit of four UFOs. Thereafter he becomes obsessed with UFOs, to the great dismay of his wife, Veronica "Ronnie" Neary (Teri Garr).

Roy begins seeing the image and soon begins making models of a distinctive butte, a place he has never actually seen, and with which he is unfamiliar. Jillian also becomes obsessed with the mental picture of a unique-looking mountain. Soon after, Guiler witnesses a UFO landing, in which Barry is abducted by unseen beings who appear to invade her home. At one point, he, Ronnie and Jilian attend a meeting featuring both patronizing and skeptical government officials, and an archetypal crackpot ("I saw Bigfoot once!").

After Roy's increasingly bizarre conduct causes Ronnie to abandon him, taking their three children with her, he sees the feature he has been modeling on a television news show: Devils Tower in Wyoming. Guiler also sees the same news broadcast, and both Roy and Jillian - as well as others with similar experiences - obsessively head toward the site. Elsewhere in the world, the pace of UFO activity is increasing; Lacombe (a character based on Jacques Vallee) and Laughlin investigate a host of weird occurrences along with other United Nations experts. Eyewitnesses report the UFOs to make distinctive sounds, a five tone motif.

After Laughlin recognizes a signal from space as a simple set of geographical coordinates pointing to Devils Tower, all parties begin to converge on Wyoming. The United States Army evacuates the area after spreading false reports that a train wreck has spilled highly dangerous nerve gas, all the while preparing a landing zone for the first human contact with the UFOs and their occupants. While the other humans drawn to the site are unable to reach Devils Tower, Roy and Jillian persist and make it to the site as dozens of UFOs appear. The enormous mothership lands, and returns people who had been abducted over the years, including Barry. With an understanding of peace between the two civilizations, the UFOs take Roy onboard their ship as ambassadors from Earth, and one of the UFO occupants comes out to greet the humans. Lacombe communicates with him by using the hand signs that are used to create the five tones in the human contact. The UFO occupant does the same and smiles before he boards back on the ship, which then lifts off.

Cast

Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, a UFO researcher who coined the term "close encounter," was a consultant for the film, and makes a cameo appearance as a scientist smoking a pipe near the end of the picture. UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallée served as a model for the character of the French scientist Lacombe played by François Truffaut. Vallée met Hynek while studying for his Ph.D. at Northwestern University.

Production

Writing

Paul Schrader wrote the first-draft script for Close Encounters, entitled Kingdom Come. Schrader's script was essentially a modern-day retelling of the story of Saint Paul. Its protagonist, Paul Van Owen, is an Air Force officer whose job is to disprove the existence of UFOs. In a climactic scene which recalls to mind St. Paul seeing a vision of Jesus and being converted to Christianity, Van Owen sees a UFO, is abducted, and carried away from the earth. Spielberg hated Schrader's script (referring to it as "embarrassing" and "terribly guilt-ridden") and the final screenplay - credited to Spielberg alone - bore very little resemblance to it. However, Schrader did have some influence on the final version of the movie: he convinced Spielberg to focus less on the government's Watergate-style cover-up of the UFO, and more on the mystical encounter with the spaceship.^[6] Jerry Belson,^[7] Hal Barwood,^[7] David Giler,^[7] John Hill^[7] and Matthew Robbins also collaborated with Schrader and Spielberg on the screenplay.^[7]

Filming

The shooting/working title for the film was Watch the Skies, which is the last line of the classic 1950s science fiction film, The Thing from Another World. When the original director of Jaws 2 was fired, Spielberg considered taking over. However, his contractual obligations to Close Encounters of the Third Kind meant that production on the sequel would have been delayed by an expensive year. Principal photography began in spring 1976 and continued until late-summer, with additional filming taking place in India in February 1977.

Roy Neary lives in Muncie, Indiana, and there were plans to actually film on location, but those plans were changed and no filming took place in Muncie. Still, there were multiple references mostly noticeable to Muncie, Indiana natives, such as the reference to an actual road in the Muncie, Indiana, area (Cornbread Road) as well as a scene at the breakfast table where Neary wears a local college shirt (Ball State University) while other props on the breakfast table such as a newspaper from the now defunct Muncie Evening Press, as well as a milk carton from a now defunct Muncie-based drive-up convenience store (Miller's Milkhouse). Inaccuracies also noted by locals of Muncie, Indiana, are the fact that the scene supposedly taking place on Cornbread road takes place at a rail road crossing, although Cornbread Road does not intersect with any railroads. Another scene portrays Muncie Police cars chasing UFOs through the mountains, and then going through tolls booths into Ohio. Muncie, Indiana, is not on the Ohio state line nor are there any mountains (or even large hills), or toll booths anywhere near Muncie, Indiana.

Spielberg wanted the Warner Bros. classic "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" to play before the film in theaters, but Columbia balked at showing a rival studio's cartoon with one of their movies.^{citation needed} However the Chuck Jones directed Merrie Melodie can be seen on the living room television as Roy Neary begins throwing dirt into the house to build his model of Devils Tower.

The film's enigmatic title refers to the three kinds of close encounters with UFOs, as categorized by the noted astronomer and UFO investigator Dr J. Allen Hynek, who defined Close Encounters of the First Kind as Sighting, the Second Kind as Evidence, and the Third Kind as Contact. In line with Hynek's rejection of the extraterrestrial hypothesis during his life, (and somewhat in line with the interdimensional ideas of Hynek's colleague, the astrophysicist, computer expert and UFO investigator Dr. Jacques Vallee), the UFOs and their occupants, as depicted in the film, are not necessarily regarded as aliens and are not described as such in the film.

Bob Balaban wrote a book about his experience shooting the film entitled Spielberg, Truffaut & Me: Close Encounters of the Third Kind - An Actor's Diary. The book was first published in 1978, and a 25th anniversary edition featuring more photos and an extra chapter was published in 2002.

Effects

The film has visual effects by Douglas Trumbull. Spielberg and Trumbull decided they did not want the usual hardware look of the spacecrafts that were so prevalent in Star Wars where instead the emphasis would be on bright lights. Trumbull photographed the UFO miniatures in dark smoke-filled rooms to give them a halo look. A computerized camera mount was designed to record camera movements used on the live sets and to be duplicated when filming the miniatures in order to seamlessly blend the UFOs into the live footage. White and gray paint was injected into a water tank for the cloud effects.

Spielberg initially wanted the mothership to be very dark, but seeing a large oil refinery at night while filming in India gave him the idea to have it lots of spindly towers covered in lights. A model of the mothership used during filming is on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia; the model includes a number of hidden objects integrated in and around the ship's antennas, domes and other structures. Examples include a 1930s automobile, a cemetery, a VW Bus and a small model of R2-D2. The model of R2-D2 can be seen upside-down on the mothership at 1:54 into the Collector's Edition DVD, as it rises behind Melinda Dillon. Most of the Devils Tower landing site scenes were filmed in a Mobile, Alabama aircraft hangar. The small aliens in the final scenes were played by local girls ranging from 8-12 years old. That decision was specifically requested by Spielberg himself due to the fact that girls move more gracefully than boys.^{citation needed}

Music

The film's score was composed by John Williams. The synthesizer used to communicate with the aliens at the end of the film is an ARP 2500 modular system. Phil Dodds, a tech from ARP Instruments Inc., is the man playing the keyboard. The motif woven through the film (the five tones that the space ship plays back and forth with the humans) is re - mi - do - do (octave lower) - sol. (Truffaut also communicates with the last alien using Kodaly hand signs for the solfege used for the 5 tones - see: [1]) These tones all lie on a major pentatonic scale. (It can also be thought of as partials 9, 10, 8, 4 and 6 of the overtone series over a fundamental pitch) The motif was developed to resemble Hello (H-E-L-L-O)^{citation needed} in musical form. Steven Spielberg remarked that "it shouldn't even be a melody: it should be more like somebody pushes a doorbell. Like Avon calling—you know. 'Ding Dong.' It's not a melody. It's not even a phrase. It's just musical intervals. With no rhythm assigned to them or anything. Just five notes."^[8] When the last two notes are played after the first three, it roughly follows the repetitive Planet Krypton melody from John Williams' Superman.^[9]

Jerry Garcia incorporated the five tones into a now famous improvised transition between The Other One and St. Stephan during a Grateful Dead concert at MacArthur Court on the campus of the University of Oregon on January 22, 1978.

The theme was played as the introduction of each show of Daft Punk's Alive 2007 tour.

The handheld game Simon was released the year after the movie, 1978. It operates in a manner much much like the UFO; a series of music notes with no melody set to flashing lights must be repeated back to the machine.

At the 2007 H.A.A.R.P. gigs at Wembley Stadium, England, Matt Bellamy of Muse played the five-note theme on guitar before beginning their set.

Release

Variant versions

Because Spielberg was disappointed with certain aspects of the theatrical cut of the film, Close Encounters was revised and re-edited for a 132-minute "Special Edition" reissue in 1980. The Special Edition features several new character development scenes, the discovery of a lost ship, the SS Cotopaxi, in the Gobi Desert, and a view of the inside of the mother ship. This "Mothership Finale" was added by Spielberg as part of a deal he made with Columbia that if he was going to show audiences the inside of the mothership, he would be allowed to re-edit the film to his intentions at that time.^[10] In recent interviews, Spielberg has stated his regret in filming the "Mothership Finale" in the first place, claiming the inside of the mothership should remain ambiguous in the imagination of viewers.^[11]

In the years that followed, other variant versions were prepared for network television, syndicated television, and LaserDisc. Some of these alternate cuts were not prepared and edited by Spielberg, although he did have a hand in the re-editing of a third major theatrical version, a 137-minute "Collector's Edition", in 1998. It is essentially the original theatrical cut with differently selected and edited material from the earlier theatrical cuts, but minus the "Mothership Finale" from the 1980 version.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a 30th Anniversary "ultimate edition" of the film on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on November 13, 2007. This edition features all three major cuts of the film—the original 1977 theatrical cut, the 1980 "Special Edition" cut, and the 1998 "Collector's Edition" director's cut. In addition, the Blu-ray edition includes a storyboard-to-scene comparison to the original 1977 Watch the Skies short feature. This set marks the first time that a Spielberg film has been released in high-definition video.

Reception

Box office performance

Close Encounters grossed $116,395,460 in 1977 and $15,693,175 in the 1980 re-release, bringing the domestic total to $132,088,635 and $303,788,635 worldwide making it one of the top grossing movies ever made at the time. However, Steven Spielberg's earlier film Jaws and George Lucas' Star Wars, which came out the same year as Close Encounters, grossed even more.

Critical reception

Close Encounters received mostly positive reviews in 1977 and showed Steven Spielberg would continue his glory at the box office after his hit Jaws. Close Encounters has a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and keeps a score of 7.8 on IMDb. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times said "it's one of the great movie going experiences" and today this film is known as a classic by most critics and fans, the movie is considered to be one of Spielberg's best films and also one of the best films to deal with aliens coming to earth. It is most often praised for being one of the few films that portrays aliens as friendly and kind, the most notable others being The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Spielberg's other sci-fi classic, E.T.. Despite the critical acclaim, the film was condemned by the families of the military personnel lost from Flight 19, who were upset that their deceased relatives were portrayed as having been abducted by aliens in 1945 and still alive in 1977, not having aged since their disappearance.

Awards

American Film Institute recognition

Notes and references

^ Paylow served as executive producer.
^ (+ $1.5m - Special Edition)
^ "IMDB entry for the movie"
^ Spielberg's comments from "The Making Of..." on the Director's Cut DVD
^ Bob Balaban: "Spielberg, Truffaut & Me: An Actor's Diary" (Titan Books, ISBN 978-1840234305)
Steven thought the moment where Francois said, "They belong here more than we" was really lovely, but he says he wants the line in English, so he will subtitle it. Someone tells him the line was in English. The big joke today is when Francois speaks English, it sounds like French. Buddy Joe Hooker, the stunt coordinator, rushes up to Francois and says the line in pigeon English: "Zay bee-long ere Mozambique." Truffaut loves it, and yells back, "Tudore yellou tchevrolay coupay" which I am finally able to translate as "two-door yellow Chevrolet coupe". Later, Buddy Joe comes by with T-shirts with "Zay bee-long ere Mozambique" printed on the back. (p. 34-35)
^ http://www.adherents.com/people/ps/Paul_Schrader.html Adherents.com
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Uncredited co-writer.
^ Quoted by John Williams, in Laurent Bouzereau, "An Interview with John Williams", printed in the booklet to The Collector's Edition Soundtrack: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Arista Records 1998
^ "Yearbook 1980: Biographies," Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1980.
^ "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", CAV LaserDisc Edition, Criterion Collection, 1990.
^ "Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition" DVD Box Set, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2007.
^ Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - Awards

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