Close Encounters of the Third Kind

One of Steven Spielberg’s finest films is both a wondrous encounter with an alien species and a finely wrought family drama.

  • Director

    Steven Spielberg

  • With

    Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon

  • USA-UK 1977. 137min

  • Digital 4K

  • Certificate

    PG

Close Encounters combines an authentic family drama with an encounter with alien beings. Spielberg’s brilliance is to see the threat from within – giving it a little of 1970’s cinema paranoia – while viewing the visitors with wide-eyed wonder. It’s fitting that great French filmmaker François Truffaut plays a pivotal role in the film, as Close Encounters finds Spielberg at his most profoundly humane. It’s one of the masterpieces of modern blockbuster cinema.