Close Encounters of the Third Kind CD Review

by Jeff Bond

The following appears as a sidebar to Jeff Bond's cover-story on the production of the new Close Encounters CD in the new issue of Film Score Monthly (Vol. 3, No. 4, May 1998). This edition is hurtling its way now to subscribers and retailers. We hope you see it soon!

JOHN WILLIAMS *****

Arista ARCD 9004. 26 tracks - 77:19

The long-rumored restoration of John Williams's Close Encounters of the Third Kind score is finally here: the question is, will fans greet this with the Hosannas that sounded for the Star Wars Special Edition reissues or the raspberries that have greeted other classic soundtrack releases like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial? As far as we are concerned, it's Hosannas all the way. The new CE3K is a spectacular sounding and revelatory album that showcases Williams's stupendous Close Encounters score in a way never previously possible, stripping away generations of dubbing stage mud and restoring sections of the score that the public has never heard.

Reviewing Williams's score is a moot point: it's a magnificent, overpowering effort that surely ranks at the top of his output, which in turn places it as one of the finest film scores ever written. Williams launched a new Renaissance of orchestral scoring with Star Wars and CE3K in 1977, but while Star Wars unleashed a horde of pallid imitators, Close Encounters has remained unique unto itself.

What follows is a discussion of how this disc differs from previous issues of the score so that collectors know what they're getting (as if you wouldn't want to buy this CD) and some analysis of how the music works (or was intended to work) in the picture. The new CD opens exactly as the original LP (and film) did: with the anticipatory crescendo and dazzling tutti hit that sounds as a black screen suddenly erupts with the blinding light of a desert sandstorm. "Navy Planes" and "Lost Squadron" are Williams's thrilling accompaniment to the discovery of "Flight 19," a group of Navy torpedo bombers missing since WWII, now found parked in a circular formation in the New Mexico desert. Williams and Spielberg immediately establish the tone of this film: something of Immense Importance and mystery is occurring, as emphasized by Spielberg's darting camera exploration of the planes and Williams's rumbling, portentous underscore, climaxing in a thrilling build-up to the start of one of the planes' 30-year-old engines. Williams adds equal weight to the translation of an old Mexican man's description of what happened: "He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him"...the low brass notes and sustains building under Bob Balaban's blank expression, as he backs into an obscuring cloud of dust, perfectly accentuate his character's shock and confusion.

In "Roy's First Encounter," high-pitched strings, aleatoric low rumbling bass and low-end piano string brushes underscore Roy's sighting of the UFO creeping out into the sky ahead of him; Williams introduces low, rumbling woodwind effects as the power repairman excitedly checks out radio reports, and Williams's churning chase scherzo bursts forth (after a subtle snippet of the chase motif is foreshadowed in the midst of the rumbling radio material) as Roy takes off in pursuit. The scherzo (quoted and repeated in the LP's "Nocturnal Pursuit") coalesces into dense and grinding bass playing, creating a musical sensation of thunder, with high-range string chords (like the negative ions hanging in the air before an electrical storm) introduced before the final exclamation of atonal strings as Roy nearly runs down the child Barry on a hilltop road.

After an eerie introduction of more high-pitched strings (as migrant worker children rise in a strange anticipation of the coming UFOs), "Encounter at Crescendo Summit" introduces a panoply of atonal orchestral effects for the flying objects before a placid resolution of French horns and flutes.

"Chasing UFOs" opens with another hair-raising choral effect (women singing the vowel "eeeeee!") over unstable string chords, before launching into some thrilling chase music. This climaxes in the flight of a pursuing police car over a highway drop-off before broad, low horn notes underscore Spielberg's crane shot showing the lights of the town below coming on after the UFOs sail off into the clouds. (This music opened the LP's "Climbing Devil's Tower" before segueing into the actual staccato pursuit music from that sequence.) Heard for the first time is Williams's beautiful resolving music which ends the cue over Dreyfuss's expression of grinning awe.

"False Alarm" introduces the impressionistic "mountain vision" motif for choir as Roy gazes at a mud sculpture of Devil's Tower created by the little boy, Barry, while Roy and Barry's mother Gillian (Melinda Dillon) join a group of oglers gathering at the site of the previous evening's encounter. As the crowd sights what appears to be an incoming UFO, more low-end textural effects give way to a moaning bass choral tone before a gorgeous crescendo underscores the dazzling searchlights sweeping the night sky. As the objects close in to the hillside, Williams introduces the Dies Irae-like four-note theme associated with Roy's obsessive pursuit of the truth about the UFOs--ironically, this is just as the lights are revealed to be military helicopters.

The most extensively atonal piece in the film is the 6:21 cue for the abduction of Barry. On this new CD, several striking effects for alien searchlights coming down the house's chimney, the screws of a floor heating grate being unthreaded and the final moments of the boy's mother chasing the UFOs from her back yard are heard for the first time.

In "The Cover-Up," Williams introduces a Prokofiev-like military theme over a menacing, slowly descending theme in low strings and snare drums. "Stars and Trucks," a spectral impressionistic passage climaxing in a broad but brief statement of the military theme, was originally interpolated in the middle of the LP's "Nocturnal Pursuit."

"Forming the Mountain" is one of the most achingly lyrical and sympathetic moments in the composer's repertoire, played by keening high-range strings as Roy struggles with his clay sculpture of the mountain. A brooding version of Roy's obsession motif plays as Roy stumbles out into his back yard at night, imploring the heavens for an answer; Williams appropriately brings a kind of heavenly chorus to Neary's eventual collapse in front of his clay mountain, which he will subsequently uncap to reveal the unmistakable shape of Devil's Tower ("TV Reveals").

While the Wyoming travel music from the original LP's "Mountain Visions" is reprised in "TV Reveals" and "Roy and Gillian on the Road," "The Mountain" continues past Roy and Gillian's initial viewing of Devil's Tower from a distance, with busy, rhythmic material accompanying the four-note obsession motif until urgent bells and harsh brass chords signal the sighting of dead livestock at roadside, despite Neary's insistence that the stories of poison gas leaks are phony.

Williams's Prokofiev-esque military theme is given full treatment after Neary cries out "Who are you people?" at an interrogation with UFO investigator Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut) and his associate Laughlin (Bob Balaban). As Neary is hustled onto a military helicopter with a group of other detainees, Williams scores the eerie, dialogue-free sequence inside the helicopter with individual horn notes highlighting specific shots of the faces of the detainees, visible only through their gas masks, and an upward-sliding string slur that climbs along with the helicopter's revving engine as the craft prepares to take off.

"The Escape" builds suspense as Neary tries to incite his fellow passengers to flee before take-off. The chase scherzo from Neary's first UFO pursuit early in the movie returns as Neary, Gillian and another detainee named Larry (Josef Summer) flee from the military compound into the hills, and an ascendant, hopeful theme emerges out of the chase music as Lacombe witnesses the trio joyfully bonding as they escape their captors.

An alternate take on the escape sequence (over 20 seconds longer at 2:40) focuses much more on the suspense and threat aspects of the scene, leaning heavily on the four-note, Dies Irae-like chase motif; Spielberg and Williams wisely chose to emphasize the buoyant emotions of the escapees in this sequence rather than the threat of recapture.

"Climbing the Mountain" is one of the highlights of the score, providing an expansive, vaulting fanfare for French horns as the camera tilts up to a full reveal of Devil's Tower. Pulsing strings play against an agitated take on the four-note chase theme as the trio climb massive rocks, while striking, percussive brass hits underscore the loading of a pursuit helicopter with tranquilizing gas. As the chopper comes into view, the chase motif grows in urgency until rapid, staccato piano playing erupts over piccolo and low string hits as the trio desperately tries to escape. In the film, a striking, ascending high string figure is tracked from the next cue as Larry is overcome by tranquilizing gas; Williams's original cue ending is more placid, with eerie flute pulses playing over an abrupt statement of the four-note pursuit motif.

"Outstretch [sic] Hands" continues Williams's richly textural suspense scoring, with grunting brass and low string rumbling beneath Roy and Gillian's final ascent. Ascending horns and strings accompany Neary's final, desperate escape from a pursuing helicopter's searchlights, and a final statement of the chase motif gives way to a spectral variation of the "mountain vision" theme as Roy and Gillian stare in awe at the "Dark Side of the Moon" scientific station preparing for the arrival of the UFOs.

"Lightshow" is Williams's gorgeous and delicately impressionistic scoring of "uncorrelated objects approaching from the north-northwest": UFOs which cause Neary to burst out in delighted laughter as they recreate the pattern of the Big Dipper in the skies above Devil's Tower. Broad flourishes accompany the first three signal ships, while the technical preparations for the first communications are handled by throbbing brass pulses over churning low strings. There's an edit in the film between the first flute statement that enters after the choir crescendos on the shooting-star-like arrival of three UFOs overhead, and some additional flute playing (of a four-note motif Williams would later employ during the "opening" of the inner mothership chamber in the Special Edition) that resolves before the arrival of the three signal ships.

"Barnstorming" and "The Mothership" play out like their counterparts on the LP ("Night Siege" and "Arrival of Sky Harbor"), although both are identified as containing previously unreleased music ("The Mothership" is approximately four seconds longer). However, the new CD take on the human/extraterrestrial musical "conversation" ("Wild Signals") is substantially longer and presents not only material heard in the movie and not on the LP, but plenty of material that didn't even make it into the film. "The Returnees" likewise features some more of the improvisational atonal effects that accompany the return of the various personalities (Air Force pilots, lost children, Amelia Earhart, Judge Crater, etc.) kidnapped by UFOs over the years.

Another highlight of the CD is Williams's original end title music, based on "When You Wish Upon a Star." This was written for the original 1977 release of the film but replaced by tracked music from earlier in the score; it was finally used in conjunction with the film during the 1980 Special Edition release.

The new Close Encounters CD is an uncanny musical recreation of the movie experience, and if there's a downside to this album, that would be it: Fans unfamiliar with the 20-year old film will find much of this score to be a riot of unresolved atonality, but the progression from grinding dissonance to sublime lyricism is never less than gripping. This is an opportunity to see Williams work at the height of his powers, in a form with which many younger fans may be wholly unfamiliar. The emotional payoff of the final, rhapsodic treatment of his five-note signal theme as the alien mothership ascends to the heavens is possibly the most profound of the composer's career. Our recommendation: purchase with extreme prejudice. And remember: We're the only ones who know! The only ones!

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