Cinema
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Steven Spielberg · 1977
Synopsis
In Indiana, a vast power cut sends Roy Neary, an electrician with a power company, out at night to investigate the outages. He crosses flying lights and keeps half his face burned as if by the sun. Obsessed, he ceaselessly models a mountain shape, in mashed potato, clay or earth, and his wife leaves with the children. Jillian Guiler, whose son Barry was taken by the same lights, looks for the same shape, while an international scientific team led by Claude Lacombe investigates these phenomena.
Context
The final set was built in an airship hangar in Mobile, Alabama, the only building large enough; the humidity sometimes formed clouds inside. Columbia, in financial difficulty, was staking its survival on this film. François Truffaut plays the scientist; he intended to write a book on the craft of acting, which he never finished, and he wrote two screenplays on the set. Spielberg, on the strength of his previous great success, had been able to push this project through; in 1980 he issued a special edition of it, for which the studio demanded that he show the interior of the spaceship.
Who it is for
A film of two hours and fifteen minutes, with visual effects achieved without computer-generated imagery; it exists in three versions, one of which adds a scene that its author regretted.
Prizes and reception
Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1978 and a special award for sound effects editing; it helped to save the studio that produced it.
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