Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Stephen Spielberg burst onto the directing scene with his second feature film, Jaws. (His first film, Sugarland Express, was a critical hit but not exactly a blockbuster at the box office.)

Third Kind?

The title itself is evocative. A third kind of close encounter? What's a close encounter, and what kinds are there?

The terminology derives from J. Allen Hynek, who was a sort of professor emeritus of UFO-buffs. He attempted to put a scientific framework around the study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and encounters with extra-terrestrials.

A close encounter of the first kind, according to his taxonomy, is simply seeing a UFO. There are many close encounters (or CEs, as the UFO community calls them) of this type. A close encounter of the second kind is not a direct sighting, but some lingering evidence that perhaps an extraterrestrial has been in the vicinity. Some people believe that crop circles are CEs of the second kind.

A CE of the third kind is actual visual sighting, not just of a potential alien vehicle, but of an alien lifeform.

The Plot

Close Encounters is one of the first films to deal with benign alien visitors; earlier sci-fi depictions of aliens are as frightening invaders. (Spielberg would famously return to this theme with his 1982 mega-hit, ET: the ExtraTerrestrial.)

In this movie, selected people from various parts of the world find themselves strangely drawn to a place they've never seen. Richard Dreyfuss plays one of the obsessed. Having experienced an earlier CE of the second kind, he becomes a UFO nut, infuriating his wife into leaving him. Modeling a strange landscape that haunts him in every pliable medium, he is startled to discover that the landscape is real; a strange geological structure called Devil's Tower, in Wyoming.

He converges with others who are also being haunted by the formation, as well as members of the US Government investigating the phenomenon. An alien ship, which it is implied has called them all, appears and returns humans abducted in the past, and Dreyfuss' character leaves with them.

Landmark Film-making

The movie was both a critical and a box-office success, and featured cutting edge special effects for the time. Even today, the appearance of the 'mothership' and the eeriness of the repeating harmonic theme they played holds up very well.

The 'Greys'

Spielberg's aliens in Close Encounters are of an archetype now known as 'greys'. These are the most often 'encounters' by people who claim to have been in contact with aliens.

They are characterized by child-like bodies, over-large heads and huge, dark, almond-shaped eyes that dominate their faces.

This has become almost a stereotypical view of what aliens should look like. Spielberg would shatter this stereotype in 1982 with the introduction of ET, the cutely ugly little monster with the L-shaped head and neck.