Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1977
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film
| Close Encounters of the Third Kind | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Written by | Steven Spielberg |
| Starring | Richard DreyfussFrançois TruffautTeri GarrMelinda Dillon |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Productioncompany | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date | 1977-11-16 |
| Country | United States |
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 science-fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, depicting civilian encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena and a government-facilitated first-contact event at Devils Tower, Wyoming. The film's title derives from the Hynek classification system for UFO reports — CE-1 (within 500 feet), CE-2 (physical evidence), and CE-3 (occupants observed) — and was developed with technical input from Hynek and from the French ufologist Jacques Vallée; ufology and UAP disclosure researchers cite the film for its acknowledged collaboration with figures from the official UFO research apparatus and its dramatization of contact protocols later said by witnesses to resemble real ones.
Hynek and the title
The film's title derives from Hynek's classification scheme, developed during his work as scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book:
- CE-1: UAP within 500 feet
- CE-2: Physical evidence left
- CE-3: Occupants observed
Later researchers extended the scheme: CE-4 (abduction) and CE-5 (human-initiated contact, developed by Steven Greer; see
Main article:
CE-5 protocol
). Hynek served as technical consultant on the film and appears in a brief on-screen cameo. Background on his earlier debunking role on Project Blue Book and his post-1969 reversal is in his biography (
Main article:
J. Allen Hynek
).
Jacques Vallée and the script
Jacques Vallée, the French-American ufologist who had worked closely with Hynek building UFO databases, served as the basis for the character of Lacombe — the French scientist played by François Truffaut who communicates with the extraterrestrials through music. Vallée described his involvement: "I met him about halfway through the final shooting of the film and there were gaps in the movie at that point and so we had lunch twice together and it was a lot of fun."
Vallée contributed a key plot element — the globe-and-string scene in which military scientists determine the location of the alien landing by stretching a string over a model globe. This was directly inspired by a real incident Vallée had recounted: when Sputnik launched in October 1957, with no computer program capable of computing the orbit rapidly, the director of Harvard Observatory used string stretched over a model of the Earth to estimate the satellite's trajectory for New York Times editors. Spielberg, during a pre-production visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also consulted JPL scientists on how to depict ET communication; Vallée's suggestion of a five-tone musical phrase became the film's iconic contact sequence.
In a 2024 interview, Vallée reflected on the film's portrayal of alien behaviour as deliberately absurd — "not 'take me to your leader,' not 'this is what you guys should do from now on'" — and compared the encounters to the Zen koan of one hand clapping, designed to stop the rational mind.
Production
The film received unusually extensive cooperation from U.S. government agencies for a Hollywood production, including access to authentic radar film and consultation with active-duty military personnel. According to filmmaker James Fox, when Fox was making his first UFO documentary in 1997, Spielberg declined an interview but indirectly relayed the suggestion that Fox investigate "this landing case that happened in Africa at the school" — the 1994 Ariel School incident in Ruwa, Zimbabwe (
Main article:
Ariel School UFO incident
).
Cultural impact
The film's first-contact sequence — humans and non-human beings communicating through a five-tone musical phrase — became one of the most widely recognised pop-culture framings of peaceful extraterrestrial contact in the late 20th century, influencing the emotional and conceptual register of subsequent contact accounts. The film won an Academy Award for cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and a special achievement award for sound effects editing, and was selected for the National Film Registry in 2007. The depiction of luminous, Nordic-featured beings exchanging human passengers from a mothership established a visual template that recurred in later contact experience accounts, channeling narratives, and UFO documentary aesthetics through the 1980s and 1990s. The CE-3 classification — occupants of craft observed — became the dominant public vocabulary for close encounters involving beings.
Steven Greer, founder of CSETI and originator of the CE-5 protocol, cites the film as an approximation of real contact methodology in connection with the "Rosetta Stone" framework for human-initiated contact (
Main article:
CE-5 protocol
). Former NASA scientist Kevin Toth cited the film as a formative cultural reference, noting its 1977 release coincided with Star Wars and television programming such as In Search Of with Leonard Nimoy.