Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Two years on from his blockbuster Jaws, Spielberg again wowed audiences with a film that turned the evil-aliens-from-outer-space cliché inside out. The protagonists in Close Encounters of the Third Kind even experience a moment of spiritual awakening when Earth receives a visit from outer space. An electrician starts having strange visions. A child disappears into a roiling cloud mass right in front of his mother’s eyes. In the meantime, the military is evacuating the area around a flat-topped mountain under false pretences. The fact that the spaceship’s arrival still fills us with awe today is thanks in part to Douglas Trumbull, the genius behind the groundbreaking special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). To accompany Spielberg’s latest film Disclosure Day , Eye is showing Spie