Steven Spielberg loves to tell modern day fairy tales and Close Encounters is yet another from the factory. Richard Dreyfuss plays an Indiana lineman who has an encounter with a UFO during a power outage. What follows is either a fall into madness or a quest to find out the truth about his visitors. I was amazed to find out that the original script came from Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) who had his name removed from the writing credits after Spielberg made a number of changes (I found it odd that Spielberg took a writing credit, but I could also see Schrader putting a masturbation scene in here somewhere). The script is the usual Hollywood processing at times: no one believes the hero except for the one main guy, etc. I'm not calling the script terrible, but it's not over the top.
What makes Close Encounters are two things. The first is Spielberg's direction, mainly when he uses large spaces as Fordian panoramas. The second are the special effects which are still amazing thirty years later. If another director had made this it would have been forgotten '70's garbage.
While Close Encounters isn't Spielberg's greatest film, it certainly is a fine piece of film making. Another modern day fairy tale.
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