Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

I'm enjoying my journey through great directors' early films. This is Steven Spielberg's precursor to E.T. and subsequently the Indiana Jones institution. What is clear in Close Encounters is Spielberg's tremendous use of camera angle and showing the audience the reaction rather than the action (seen best in Richard Dreyfuss's scene in his truck when a U.F.O. comes nearby). The effects are great, but some scenes drag on a bit (as they tend to in sci-fi flicks in the 60's and 70's).

The story is essentially being able to hang on to personal experience in the face of ridicule; it's a story of faith. How remarkable that faith is a focus of so many films, especially Spielberg's, when our society believes in so little.

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