Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Anthoney Baker

Title/Year: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Director/Birth Country/Year Born Steven Spielberg, American, b.1946
Budget: $19.4M (IMDb.com)
Gross: $303,788,635 (Wikipedia.com)
Synopsis: Aliens visit earth and make contact with the human race for the first time. An electrical lineman, played by Richard Dreyfus, is cursed with metal images of a distinct mountain in Wyoming called ‘Devils Tower’. It is discovered that several people have had the same visions and it’s believed that the aliens planted the visions as a way to ‘invite’ them to the landing location.
Narrative and Visual Keywords: Aliens, Close Encounters, failed marriage, disbelief, alien visions, metal instability, faith, extra-terrestrial, adventure, military, humanity, special effects driven, visual story
Characterization/ Dialogue: Wonderful use of minimal dialogue. During key moments of the story at no time does a character on screen ask what’s happening in the story, this prevents the dialogue from being “on the nose” and avoids exposition. The marital fighting scenes are raw and very emotionally driven.
Camera/lighting/editing technique: This film is effects driven. While the effects have not aged well they were groundbreaking for their time. Steven Spielberg uses extremely long takes to communicate the story visually. The editing is often used to re-orientate the view into understanding the larger picture; for example, during the third act break the camera kept cutting to an wide shot to remind the viewer the location of the scene.
Political/ Social Commentary: The social commentary of the militant use of force and deception of the United States Military is evident in the film. While other countries are experiencing their own encounters, such as the tonal sounds heard in India, the US Government uses deception to hide the location of the landing site and the evidence of UFO’s.
Historical Relevance/ Recognition: According to Wikipedia, the film was nominated for eight Oscars awards but only received one win in Cinematography. (This film came out the same time frame as Star Wars) This film has been added to the Library of Congress and is #64 on AFI’s 100.
Random fact: Steven Spielberg stated during a 2005 ‘inside the Actors Studio’ with James Lipton that when he wrote the film he did not have a family and that if he were making the film today he would have never have had Neary (the main character) leave his family and go on the mother ship.

Questions:

Essentially, Duel does not portray anything too groundbreaking. Although it was filmed in 1971 the special effects of the film were not anything Hollywood hadn’t seen before. However, the underlining theme of Duel was where the film stood out. At its core Duel is a film about an everyday man being ‘hunted’ by a giant beast. Much like Jaws, Spielberg was showing his vision, and for that, what stands out in this film is the vision of the director.

Duel was Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut. He proved that at 24 years old he had the talent to direct a suspenseful and well made film. While most critics will say that this film was Spielberg’s audition for Jaws, at its core, it is a film about a large beast hunting the everyday man. This film proved that Steven Spielberg had a vision and was able to capture his vision and tell the story visually.

Steven Spielberg’s vision has absolutely evolved during his 40 year career. Early in his career his theme was always a nameless beast hunting an everyday man. The creatures in his early work, semi-trucks and sharks, evolved into more ‘realistic’ monsters in his later work. From a broken legal system hunting an innocent man in ‘Minority Report’ to the unstoppable Nazi war machine in ‘Schindler’s List’ and Saving Private Ryan ‘ Spielberg’s antagonist have certainly become more real, and in turn, more dangerous.

Personal: Do you prefer this director's early works or later works?
I very much prefer Steven Spielberg’s later work. “Saving Private Ryan” was my all-time favorite film; right up until I saw “AI”.