Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 1977. USA. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Screenplay by Spielberg, Hal Barwood, Jerry Belson, John Hill, Matthew Robbins. With Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, François Truffaut. 4K DCP. 138 min.
Following the monumental success of Jaws, Steven Spielberg shifted his focus from the New England coast to the skies of Indiana, in search of signs of life among the Midwestern stars. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, featuring Richard Dreyfuss as a distressed, absent-minded father and a special appearance by François Truffaut as a French scientist, Spielberg captures suburban, middle-class anxiety in an American family while exploring an obsession with something bigger (and perhaps better) than real life. John Williams’s haunting, often atonal score, Douglas Trumbull’s visual effects, and Carlo Rambaldi’s striking extraterrestrial designs create a magical combination, a moving tribute to the otherworldly effect of moving images and their fantastic power over the human eye.