Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Director's Cut) [Blu-ray] [Region B] [1978]

Forgive me as I slap on the sentimental hat, because watching this glorious film on Blu-ray with a full high definition experience... Well, lets just say it pains me that so few films are released like this anymore. I would even suggest this to be a bold production, given that so much patience is required before the audience can finally witness their reward. But thats largely the mood that Spielberg wants us to fall into - the waiting game that these wonderful characters are feeling. Richard Dreyfuss (playing Roy Neary) steals the show as a father who believes he is all but an lone figure when a mysterious group of flying 'crafts' dazzle him late one night on a car journey, causing his behaviour to become erratic and his motivation to find answers relentless. The problem is, he wants answers to questions that those around him don't believe to exist. After his family leave home when they become more and more concerned, nothing holds him back from making the ultimate journey to where he believes the answers will come... In typical Spielberg fashion, the film is saturated with clever motifs reaction shots - just a couple of the trademarks he would later go on to develop and perfect. But this is a film that is quite contrary to his later efforts, as it excels in confusing the audience as to whether the 'force' that is meddling with the characters has good or bad intentions. The films resolves this at the end, but its exciting to watch because it plays on the idea that alien activity could be either a positive or negative experience, depending on how you view their actions. Before I bought this particular product, I noted that a 'Close Encounters...' Blu-ray was actually already available from Amazon (this one) , but I held back from buying for a couple of reasons. Firstly, another 'Close Encounters...' Blu-ray was available for Pre-Order here (the one on this page), so I made my order and received it after a lengthy delay, which Amazon attributed to stock problems. In comparing this particular product to the former U.S version, the only difference is that this is an official U.K release, so it actually doesn't matter which one you buy as they will both play in your Blu-ray player and both are the same price. Over on Amazon US, you also have the option of buying an 'Ultimate Edition' that includes a Bonus Disc and smart packaging... Looks like the U.K has been duped yet again! As for the transfer, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the integrity of the picture. This is a very, very faithful restoration that doesn't look over-processed at all like you get with many Lowry restorations, and certainly hasn't been over laboured. Grain is intact throughout and is never drops out artificially. Matting shots/special effects look like they've come straight off the film. A bit of gate weave is present, but heck, that happens anyway in a theatre. The colours are surprisingly rich and very stable - a surprise to me because 70's films can often look drab or coarse. This is absolutely not the case here. George Lucas should take note; this was released the same year as 'Star Wars: A New Hope', and yet this product looks MILES better than the latter which was recently released on Blu-ray. Spielberg really does care about his films, and the added bonus of course is that this product contains all three versions of the film; the Original, the Special Edition and the Directors Cut. Super Duper! Despite the flawless transfer and option for editions, this product does not contain any special features which is very much disappointing. Although the back of the case states that one is present, this feature is largely irrelevant unless you're interested in the different versions of the film, since it allows small 'graphics' to appear on the bottom corner of the screen (during the film playback) which indicate when a particular scene was not part of the original film. Interesting, but I guess part of the reason this product is so cheap is because you're just getting the film itself. I can't give any less than 5-Stars because this is precisely how a Blu-ray should be released. Its selling at a very affordable price (thats actually cheaper than many new DVDs, which in my honest opinion have become worthless due to file sharing), its got a flawless transfer that looks completely natural and its a classic film. What more you could want? Buy it now!

I can watch this film every time it is on the telly. The story line is not massively complex but I just love the bit near the start where the menacing storm clouds start to descend around the the little boy Barry's house and all the home electrical appliances become scarily possessed. The effects still hold up pretty well in the modern CGI age and I love the big mother ship which is lit up like a chandelier. I think we need to discuss mashed potato as well! When Roy starts to suffer his psychic alien induced breakdown I just love the scene where he sculpts the Devils tower out of mashed potato. Every time I have mashed potato with a meal I always make a mini devils tower out of it with the fork. I haven't yet emptied the wheely bin out on the street and made a Devils tower out of that as that would be going a bit too far.

As expected

Good old film

With 3 versions on-board including 'Theatrical Version' 'Extended Version' and 'Director's Cut' the story tells of mysterious happenings and sightings around the globe. The film centres upon Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss ) who after having a close encounter whilst driving his work-truck encouraging him to head of in the direction of where sightings had been reported....he's not disappointed, three UFO's are seen with police=cars hopelessly in pursuit, at this location Roy meets Jillian (Melinda Dillon ) and her young son Barry (Cary Guffey) at the hillside site. Some little time after the 3 year-old Barry is abducted. Both Jillian and Roy become obsessed with mountain-like images, Jillian paints it, Roy tries to crate the image imprinted in his mind, Roy becomes so erratic and obsessive his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) leaves him taking their children with her. The authorities close off a large area in Wyoming mysteriously claiming a train-crash had caused contamination, the incident reported on TV will show an image of Devils Tower, which is instantly recognised by those that had similar images imprinted in their mind including Roy and Jillian, all head for the restricted are, Roy and Jullia team up, Roy is convinced that they will find no contamination, but, what is the significance of Devils Tower ? They will find a site has been prepared for a UFO landing... What has become of Barry..? ....all will be answered during the film's spectacular finale. In terms of the 4k upgrade which I felt given the films subject matter was a worthy investment I have to say it was a game of two halves, early-on the visual content felt average, however, the climax of the movie seemed a different ball-game (around the final 25-30 minutes, the upgrade work appeared to have been given more thought and effort. A film that does have it's downside but is blessed with a visually spectacular for it's climax

40 years on, still one of Spielberg's best. A sci-fi classic. I first saw it in the cinema as a child, a few months after the first Star Wars movie. To me (and my entire family) there was no comparison: Close Encounters kick-started my serious sci-fi habit because it's a seriously good movie/story. It also seems oddly optimistic today – would we really be directing melodies towards UFOs rather than missiles? (As for Star Wars – meh. Whatever. Mildly diverting battles in space, mostly two-dimensional if amusing characters and a few cod-Freudian father issues. Though Rogue One a cut above.) Watch this if you enjoy thought-provoking human-centred sci-fi from a director at the top of his game and a star, Richard Dreyfuss, who embodies Everyman in an inimitable, endearing way. Also interesting to see Spielberg playing with ideas that would become ET. Don't watch this if you're after battles in space – go for Guardians of the Galaxy or, of course, any of the Star Wars episodes. (But preferably Rogue One.)

The blu-Ray gives you all three variations of the film. I recommend the Director’s Cut. In 1977 George Lucas and Steven Spielberg proved to Hollywood that there was a vast audience for science fiction films if they were made as A, not B-movies and given a large enough budget to look realistic. Spielberg had quickly moved from a director of popular TV movies for Universal (“Duel”), to a shockingly huge hit with “Jaws” which made over twenty times its budget. That was the kind of thing Hollywood noticed. There was great pressure on him, with the question being “Could he do it again or was “Jaws”a fluke?” For a young director that was a question on which his future career depended. He came through spectacularly with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Spielberg was at this time a young, mostly self-taught director who worked intuitively. On both films he ran wildly over schedule due to his propensity to think up new scenes at home which often required testing out new effects to see how they worked. A perfectionist by nature, he also went considerably over budget, his original estimate of 2.7 million ballooning to 19 million. Ordinarily studios would have written him off, but the popularity of the films was so gigantic that instead, it heralded a new era of filmmaking. He began working on ideas for his new film while working on “The Sugarland Express” and when offered “Jaws II,” he said no. He went very counterintuitively and decided (in a sense) to remake “Firelight”, a movie he made when he was seventeen and still in high school. That film was about scientists investigating UFOs and their effect on a community, played by students from his Phoenix high school. It actually got a one-night showing in 1964 at a local theater and was attended by over 500 people. He was also inspired by the time his father woke him in the middle of the night to drive to the country to watch a meteor shower, an event which instilled in him the wonder of the night sky. He actually includes a scene like this in “Close Encounters” though with a less wondrous result. Over time the idea grew and he went through several screenwriters and scripts until he decided to write it himself with the idea of an abducted child and the mood of the song, “When You Wish Upon a Star”. Because of his success with “Jaws”, Columbia gave him a lot of artistic control. It was produced by Julia and Michael Phillips, who had produced “The Sting” and “Taxi Driver”. While developing it he asked the Air Force and NASA for technical and anecdotal help and not only did both turn him down but NASA sent him a twenty-page letter telling him not to make it. This only served to convince him that he should make it and may account for the portrait of government forces in the film. He did receive help from talking with scientists including J.Allen Hynek, once a member of Project Bluebook, who created the “Encounters” index years before and who appears briefly in a blue suit at Devil’s Tower. He also talked with astronomer, engineer and author Jacques Vallee, the basis of the character Claude Lacombe. In addition to his technical and scientific books, he also wrote books about “the UFO mystery” and had actually moved away from the extraterrestrial hypothesis to a more esoteric, multi dimensional universe theory. Spielberg grew up in the 1950s and 60s, the heyday of UFOs - a subject that just wouldn’t go away no matter how much the government dismissed it. He told Vallee he was probably right, but his theory was vague and complex and he wanted to give people what they were expecting and that was extraterrestrials. His film neatly sums up the history of the UFO phenomenon up to that time. The resulting film is full of Spielberg’s fertile imagination and everything he had learned by watching hundreds of movies over time. From the start you know you are in for something different. Right away he throws you into the total confusion of a sandstorm, howling wind, dialogue in Spanish and the sudden arrival of a dusty Dodge from which come French scientific investigator Lacombe (Francois Truffaut) and his translator, David Laughlin ( a barely recognizable Bob Balaban with a heavy beard). There are planes in the Sonoran Desert, still operable planes from Flight 19 that disappeared in late 1945. We begin to catch on. From there it’s a quick jump to a chaotic air traffic control center in Indianapolis where pilots are reporting seeing something amazing but will not make that an official report because they’d probably never be allowed to fly again. Another jump to an old white farmhouse surrounded by flat fields and a vast, starry sky (the skies here, if you watch them closely, often have lights moving in them). Here we meet Jillian Guiler and her four-year-old son, Barry, who are having a night like no other with toys self-activating and the refrigerator dumping out its contents while Barry’s record player plays “The Square Song”. A fast jump takes us to the suburban home of Roy and Ronnie Neary and their three children where we find Roy to be a father willing to take time out to help his son with homework and who has a kids sense of humor himself. He’s suddenly called away for the night of his life that will change his whole world. In eighteen minutes, Spielberg has introduced all the main characters, given enough exposition to give the audience a sense of what is happening and set the film off on its course to places unknown.The Sonoran Desert opening was an afterthought that Spielberg added as a pickup along with several more that gave what he called a “wow factor” beyond its Indiana setting. There’s the famous scene in India with mountains in the distance and a thousand extras chanting and the brief trip to the Gobi Desert that added a world-event scope. In each case we get something unexpected. Spielberg intuitively knows the basic setups of film scenes and he uses this to surprise or confound the audience. At one point a new visitation by UFOs is set up and the flow of the scene as well as the score leads the audience to expect something wondrous, only to have it turn out otherwise. A simple overhead shot of Roy’s lineman’s truck speeding down a country road would usually be used just to establish the general sense of where he is, becoming so much more dramatic when a large, saucer shaped shadow passes over it (in the director’s cut). In a joking scene, Roy twice waves a car behind him to pass, with a surprise the second time. This kind of playing with the expectations of the audience goes on throughout the film. Then there’s the abduction of Barry, one of the most famous episodes in the film. Here, the director showed that he could make light itself a form of terror, whether bright white lights from above or the orange phantasmagoria that appears when Barry opens the door. Spielberg was a wizard at lighting. The original pace of the film dragged somewhat in the middle, but the director’s cut fixed that with new editing. Columbia had to borrow money from EMI and Time Inc. just to complete the film. Originally scheduled for summer 1977 release, Spielberg wanted six more months to work on it in fall and then release it in summer, 1978. But Columbia was out of money and needed to release it “as is” for the holidays in November/December. Of course he didn’t do this alone. The actors all came through, with Richard Dreyfus a perfect everyman partly because the audience didn’t know him as well as the bigger names Spielberg had considered, notably Steve McQueen. Melinda Dillon is wonderful as a caring mother driven by a search for her son. Their reunion is an emotional high point in the film. Her son, Barry, played by four-year-old Cary Guffey, was helped in his performance by the director on a ladder getting him to look up and smile by holding boxes of toys. His response in one scene is unscripted. Spielberg asked esteemed French New Wave director FrancoisTruffault if he would consider acting in it and to his surprise he said yes after reading the script. Lacombe adds a lot of humanity to the film as the person who best understands what is going on. Terry Garr is totally sympathetic as Ronnie, a wife tragically watching her husband and family life crumble before her eyes. He was also assisted by a stellar group of assistants including cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (“The Deer Hunter”), film editor Michael Kahn who has edited most of Spielberg’s films, special effects master Douglas Trumbull (“2001: A Space Odyssey”), model maker Ralph McQuarrie (“Star Wars”) and others. Of course this was the third collaboration of Spielberg and composer John Williams. Here Williams did a dual score with parts that are traditional symphonic melodies and other, more abstract sections that enhance what is going on without melodic development. It’s a powerful score that matches this powerful film. One of the most persistent Spielberg themes began here, which is that magical or extraordinary events can occur even in a mundane setting like twentieth century suburban America. He also made a rare, optimistic film of an alien visitation to earth, which they usually come to conquer. It has become fashionable for some critics to be dismissive of Spielberg. They dislike his warm, family friendly sensibility and think of it as sentimentalism. From the late 60s on it became fashionable to be cynical and to prefer the trope of the tortured artist, the anti-hero and the outsider. Spielberg felt ordinary people could be heroic too, but touches on subjects like artistic obsession with Roy’s dilemma. With this film, Spielberg showed that he was a master filmmaker with few peers. “Close Encounters” leaves a few questions, but is a marvel of a film with a final half hour that is still spectacular and with Spielberg, spectacle still included a deep emotional resonance.

Dieser Streifen ist einer der Besten und wohl ziemlich dicht an der Realität. Steven ist kein Spinner!

This is one of the best spielberg movies ever, and it came after the success of jaws. Its perhaps the most believable aliens meet humans films out there and was groundbreaking at the time for its analog special effects. It's on the level of 2001 a space odyssey but maintains conventional commercial storytelling. In brief, aliens make contact with humans and invite some psychically to come to a special landing they plan. The modern workingman's finds a compulsion to go....and at no cost....and goes existentially beyond....its touching, Insightful with the right small touches of comedy too. This 4k uhd hdr disc unfortunately shows how weak the original negative is. I wonder what the source is/was. Its thin and grainy, best they can do. It's not like the criterion laserdisc from the early 90s when the negative was just over 10 years old. However the hdr colors and contrast are blissful. This was know to be a colorful movie..all the differently lit spaceships etc are in full glory. The hd soundtrack is decent though I always found the music tobe mid fi on purpose. I give the visuals 4 out of 5 and audio 4 out of 5. Theres all 3 cuts of the film here but not much extra. The only valid and super interesting aliens-meet humans film is 2016's Arrival...

Excellent film en bluray et bilingue. Jouable sur les appareils au Canada. Steven Spielberg a mis les meilleurs ingrédients dans son 1er grand film comme le choix des acteurs, le scénario, les effets spéciaux futuristes pour cette époque et la musique de Jhon Williams. Un vrai régal que je recommande.

Love this movie! Worth the purchase! 🍿😍 It arrived in perfect condition, picture & sound quality was great…definitely buy this movie! 👌😎