A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1977 Arista Records Pros:  Interesting mix of atonal post-modern styles and more traditional Romantic melodic material Cons:  The cut-paste presentation of cues. When I first heard the opening bar of the  Main Title and Mountain Visions  from  Close Encounters of the Third Kind  in the late summer of 1978, I didn't know what to make of it. I hadn't seen Steven Spielberg's classic film about mankind's first peaceful contact with another spacefaring civilization (having spent much of my movie allowance on multiple screenings of  Star Wars ), so for me the music was mysterious, strangely atonal, and even ominous. It had none of the 19th Century Romantic era stylings of Williams' music for  Star Wars ; there wasn't a grand overture or march-like opening and there were very few repeated themes or leitmotivs. Indeed, some of the very early tracks on the  Close Encounters,  when heard without the context of Spielberg's movi...

In the fall of 1977, Arista Records (a now defunct label owned by Sony Music Entertainment) released Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, a 10-track selection of cues and themes composed by John Williams for Steven Spielberg's eponymous "humans meet aliens" UFO film. Arista released the album as a single-disc vinyl LP, as well as on cassette and eight-track tape. It also released the disco version of "Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on a 7-inch single, which was included as a bonus on the vinyl release. The theme, if memory serves, was incorporated into the tape editions as a bonus track; this was also done with the 1990 compact disc distributed by Varese Sarabande Records under license by the original label. Composer John Williams and director Steven Spielberg began working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3K) as early as 1975, shortly after Jaws (the duo's second collaboration) was completed....

(C) 1977 Columbia Pictures “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO classic, is the thematic antitheses to 1996’s “Independence Day.” While Roland Emmerich’s retelling of “War of the Worlds” is a throwback to 1950s “invaders from space” flicks, Spielberg’s vision of a “close encounter” between humanity and extraterrestrials is more mysterious and, in the end, more hopeful and awe-inspiring. Instead of exchanging bullets and “heat rays,” humans and aliens communicate by using musical notes.   Spielberg’s screenplay divides “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” roughly into three acts, basically corresponding to each of the three kinds of “encounters.”   In the first category, sightings of a UFO, we first see a very strange sight in the Mexican desert: an international team of researchers led by French UFO expert Lacombe (the late Francois Truffaut) and guided by several Mexican “federales” finds five World War II vintage Grumman TBM Avenge...