“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is one of my all-time favorite movies. Every six months or so, I pop it in the DVD player and watch it again. My ten-year old daughter watches it with me every time as well. I was 11 years old when it came out and when I first saw it in the theater. It changed my life. Literally. Before I had seen it, I used to be terrified to go to sleep at night. There had been a report a few years earlier of men being abducted by aliens in Pascagoula, Mississippi and that had a dramatic impact on me. I was very young at the time and I knew Mississippi was close to Louisiana where I lived. I was very interested in space however and liked movies about space. My parents knowing that I had this fear of being abducted, were hesitant to let me see CE3K and my aunt and uncle (who had seen it) were also a bit leery. However, they relented and I saw it. For the first time, I saw the possibility that aliens could be merely curious explorers and not hell-bent on destruction. Instead of fear, I began welcoming the idea that life might be out there searching for us.
So CE3K is definitely on my list of all-time favorite movies. It has a child-like wonder to it.
*Barry is shown to be surprised by the extraterrestrials. Director Steven Spielberg had two crew members hide in boxes off camera, one in a clown suit and one in a gorilla suit. One popped out, then the other as the cameras rolled, catching young Cary Guffey’s bewildered reaction. Spielberg then whispered to the gorilla to remove his mask, eliciting a smile from Guffey… Cary Guffey’s performances were so good that they only ever had to do one or two takes of each shot he was in. He became known as One-Take Cary on the set, and Steven Spielberg had a t-shirt printed up for him with the phrase written on it.
*
I saw CE3K again about a year ago and thought it held up pretty well. There’s a sense of wonder and anticipation that still gets me. The tie-in to Flight 19 was genius; that was in the news a lot at the time due to the (bogus, but hey, it was the woo-woo Seventies) Bermuda Triangle connection: Flight 19 - Wikipedia
Is this something you feel about a lot of older movies or just some specific ones. I ask because movie styles have changed over the years. I love the movie Spartacus even though it was made sixteen years before I was born. I think it’s a great movie but if someone had shot that movie in 2010 they would likely think it’s a terrible movie with poor special effects and overly melodramatic acting. I really like Blade Runner (I was six when it came out) but it’s pacing is slow compared to movies made today. I don’t think it’d do all that great if released today but I still think it’s a good movie.
It is something I feel about a lot of older movies. But I think it’s no excuse to still list them as classics if they aren’t as good to watch anymore; if the flaws are more evident. That’s what I meant by nostalgia. They consider them good now, because they were then, while I don’t think that’s good enough. That’s my side, though I know there are plenty who’d argue the other quite successfully.
I think Spielberg didn’t find his footing in regards to pacing until Raiders, and things started to work a lot more consistently after that (with a few missteps - Empire of the Sun has terrible pacing), while I’ve always thought Ridley Scott is all flash and no substance.
Blade Runner is not an action movie, it transports you to another time and place and presents a morally murky situation you have to apply your own judgement to. If you’re not interested in the reality it creates or the moral ambiguity then yes it is pretty boring, I wouldn’t say nostalgia is needed to enjoy it.
I’ve heard the same complaint about the first half of A New Hope, that it is boring and who cares about this desert planet or a bar full of aliens. And again it is a film that transports you to another place and time, if you’re not interested in that you won’t enjoy it.
I thought this might be the case and there are certainly plenty of people who agree. I know a lot of people who won’t watch an old movie because they don’t like the acting style, the special effects or the fact that it’s black and white.
I don’t think it’s nostalgia. I happen to think The Changeling (1980) starring George C. Scott is an excellent movie for reasons other than nostalgia. It’s well acted and has a pretty engaging plot. However, most audiences today would find the pacing of the movie to be way too slow. I also don’t believe that people who know movies (I don’t include myself on this list) think old movies are classics out of a sense of nostalgia.
Genius?
I thought it was trite. All those Bermuda Triangle books (and they started long before Charles Berlitz ever set pen to paper) had been hinting at aliens being responsible for the disappearance. Spielberg using this was just another of those “National Enquirer” momenyts.
Another vote for the original being much better than the “special edition”. If you haven’t seen it, try to watch the original first. Cleaner, less stupid stuff, a tighter ending. (Then watch “Hardware Wars”.)
And it has Melinda Dillon in her prime. Plus Truffaut, Balaban, …
When I was a kid, I treated Close Encounters like a Godzilla movie. With Godzilla movies, I hated what I would call the “people parts”. I would zone out when the people were running around and talking and just pay attention (and love) when the monsters appeared. Replace monsters with Aliens and that was how I sat through CE3K.
As an adult, I appreciated the movie more and what strikes me as interesting is how Richard Dreyfus just basically tosses his family aside to follow his obsession. I don’t think a modern movie would do that with a character you are supposed to like.
SO, i think what your saying is akin to the following…
Birth of a nation, was a great movie, but it would be better with sound.
Casablanca was a great movie, but it would be better in color.
Obviously movies with sound and color are better then without, thats why sound and color in filmaking were invented, to make the movie more like life, welive ina a world with color and sound! You are not gonna find a movie with current styles of pacing form the 1970…that why we call such thing “current”.
I have always – going back to my original viewing in the 70s – thought the middle sequence, with Richard Dreyfus’s sculpting of Devil’s Towers in mashed potatoes and dirt – interminable and boring.
But I still watch the beginning (until Dreyfus’s CE) and the end (from around the point where Dreyfus escapes and makes it to the landing site) just about every time I see it’s on.
Er. No, that’s not at all what I’m saying. That would only be true if the lack of colour or sound makes them flawed as a film if we view it today, and that’s not necessarily so. There are many movies of yesteryear that I think still hold up today, I just don’t think Jaws or Close Encounters do, amongst others.
Spielberg made the movie before he was married or had kids, and has since said he regrets that Roy drove his wife and kids away. But c’mon, it underlined just how obsessed the character was becoming.
Not just a modern movie, but even the same movie directed by Spielberg in the modern era. He’s gone on record as saying he wouldn’t end the film the same way he did, since he couldn’t see a father ever doing now, now that Spielberg’s a father himself.
Maybe. It seems kinda M. Night Shamalany now, thinking back in it. I think the film really benefited from the alien abduction craze of the time. Aliens really weren’t such a big deal in the pop culture until the mid 70’s or so. That topic seems so old and stale now to everyone (except George Lucas, who still things its a cool idea) that CE doesn’t have the same appeal.
This is like complaining that Casablanca ends where the real action starts because the real meat is how Rick & Louie escape to America. It completely misses the point.
Close Encounters has the trappings of a science fiction film, but it is largely a film about Faith–and one of the greatest films on that subject, for my money, ever made. I think it’s also highly undervalued as one of the great conspiracy movies of the 70s, up there with The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor (except not nearly so pessimistic).
Perhaps Spielberg is right in that it’s a young man’s film, for which we should all be grateful he made it before he had a family, because Roy’s obssession, as disturbing as it is moving, means nothing if he doesn’t sacrifice everything for it.
For my money, it’s still the best film Spielberg has ever made. And except for the silly interior of the mother ship, I don’t mind the Special Edition changes (the boat in the desert, the shadow over Roy’s truck, etc.).