Close Encounters of the Third Kind
December 14, 1977 in theaters
After a series of strange visions, an ordinary Indiana power company lineman becomes obsessed with a shape he cannot explain — a compulsion that leads him across the country toward a secret government site where first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization is imminent. Spielberg’s 1977 film is a landmark of science fiction cinema and a meditation on wonder.
Cast
Director
TRAILER
QUOTE
"I keep seeing this shape. Wherever I go."
DID YOU KNOW?
The five-note musical theme took weeks of collaboration between Spielberg and John Williams to get right.
THE VERDICT
Synthesized from published reviews
One of cinema's most personal first-contact films and one of the genre's most sustained acts of wonder. The film treats first contact not as a military or political event but as a spiritual one, and Richard Dreyfuss's Roy Neary -- obsessive, frightened, and compelled -- is one of the most fully realized protagonists in science fiction cinema. The final sequence at Devils Tower is one of American cinema's great achievements in orchestrated awe. A film that believed in the mystery it was creating and honored it completely.
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