by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

During the making of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Steven Spielberg was already kind of a big man in Hollywood. But from the other side he was still young. Technically speaking this was his third theatrical film. He did work for television from the late 60s. At that time he already directed a number of feature length TV movies. One of them was the famous Duel. And then he did only 2 theatrical pictures: the 1972's The Sugarland Express and the 1974's Jaws. And now there is this movie.

Watching it is kind of weird. It is this big epic film about grand ideas as well as very emotional stuff. Wonderfully directed. But then there is cheese or badly done moments here and there too, reveling how early this movie was in Spielberg's career.

It is claimed by the movie itself that Steven Spielberg actually wrote the movie himself. And while it's true to a certain extend, there were writers who were tasked with making the screenplay before Spielberg actually took it upon himself to write. There was a draft of the movie written by Paul Schrader ( the writer of Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver ) who introduced a lot of the elements seen in the final film. Spielberg's final version completely reworked the main character, though, from a military person who's job is to debunk UFO's that turns into a believer, to an every-man. An ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances. A technique that Steven Spielberg would use a lot more in his subsequent career.

While watching the movie I cannot un-see some technical issues. Things that Spielberg wouldn't do even in the 80s. So pointing them out kind of defeats the purpose, since the director already learned not to make those mistakes. For example, in order for the bright UFO light to work, it has to contrast with extreme darkness of everything else. And there is plenty of that in the film. For example there is a shot of the main character driving through a tunnel in the middle of the night and we see almost nothing at all. But then there is a sequence of a woman looking for her child in a forest. A forest that should be equally as dark. But the forest is so bright and filled with fog that it looks fake.

Also some of the dialogue is very bad. But only in a few instances. But it's fine. Spielberg is not a writer. Usually he hires writers. So I guess a slight lack of experience introduced a bit of cringe into the dialogue. Also it was early in his career. Comparing the dialogue in this movie to something like AI: Artificial Intelligence, which is also written by Spielberg, makes you see that these few decades of making good films paid off in him having a better sense of dialogue.

On the technical side it's a visual effects heavy movie from the 70s. So if you are expecting high end CGI work, don't. It was made before CGI was a thing. Just before this movie was released, Star Wars dropped. And if you compare the two. In some strange way, Close Encounters actually looks better. Even George Lucas agrees with that point of view.

There was a very big limitation though in those days. And therefor the movie doesn't feel too Spielbergian if you are familiar with his newer films. He likes to move the camera a lot. But in the 70s this would introduce a very big problem. They had an early version of motion control which was used on Star Wars, but in this movie it was used a lot less. And more towards the climax of the film. But since they didn't use it on every visual effects shot, the movie feel a little bit more static than what a Spielberg movie usually feels like.

But when-ever there are no UFOs in sight, Spielberg goes full Spielberg. And the camera does what a Spielbergian camera should do.

Though if you look at the compositing side of things, this movie is kind of impressive. All of the lights from the UFOs have lens flares. And the light lights up the environment. And this is a very hard work considering that they didn't have software for compositing. But instead had to resort to chemical and physical tricks.

This movie as every other thing Spielberg did is very good at inducing a sens of wonder. It scares you and makes you curious to see more in the same time. Also it has this feeling of an insane epic. Like the movie just gonna suddenly, out of nowhere introduce a concept that when you think about it makes you question, how the hell would anybody even manage something of such a scale. And it does it multiple times.

Happy Hacking!!!


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