Steven Spielberg (1977)
Jaws was nothing if not single-minded. In spite of the predictable attempts made by some critics to freight the picture with insights into man’s terror of the unknown deep and comparisons with Enemy of the People and Moby Dick, it was clear this was an unadorned, streamlined adventure and that the director, Steven Spielberg, hadn’t consciously used elements that might compel audiences at a subconscious level. (The film’s successor as all-time top-grosser, Star Wars, has invited plenty of speculation about the need, in our troubled times, to see the forces of good prevail unequivocally.) Jaws gave Spielberg the status and freedom to make more ‘personal’ films. The disappointment of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is that it is basically impersonal – thin, and, ultimately, a gorgeous pyrotechnics show. The effects are often more resonant than anything in Jaws, thanks to the subject matter, but the director doesn’t seem to recognise the potential of his material. Spielberg, hired for a purely commercial project like Jaws because of the precocious ‘film sense’ he demonstrated in the made-for-television Duel and the critically-acclaimed The Sugarland Express, suggests here that his tastes are no more sophisticated than the tastes of a large part of the Jaws audience.
Close Encounters also illustrates that high quality, naturalistic American screen acting can be less effective in this kind of sci-fi territory than one-dimensional playing by physically striking performers whose looks establish their character. Hugely proficient actor though he is, Richard Dreyfuss fails to convince as the hero, Roy. The film mixes traditional American adventure elements (and attributes – like the maverick spirit) with the condescension that underlies heart-warming stories of the little man who beats the system (and, in this instance, does an exchange with an extra-terrestrial). This little man is a little fat man and in the world of adventure movies, lack of athleticism severely undermines pretensions to heroism. Dreyfuss’s avoirdupois is rather unkindly exploited. At a pivotal exciting moment Roy keeps slipping down a mountainside and all you can feel is that it’s not surprising with that excess poundage.
Dreyfuss isn’t really fat, of course – he’s just heavier than a young, Hollywood leading man is expected to be. He’s not only an intelligent actor; he’s also capable, like others who have emerged in recent years, of projecting a character’s intelligence. In close-up, Dreyfuss can think with the best of them (Robert De Niro, William Atherton) but his physique works against him – it makes him innocuous. I haven’t yet seen The Goodbye Girl but it seems appropriate that Richard Dreyfuss should have won the Academy Award for his work in a Neil Simon piece, where dialogue completely overshadows all other elements. Dreyfuss’s movement in Close Encounters is occasionally comical: Roy’s tug-of-war with a bin man over a trash can made me laugh out loud but I think this was mainly because Dreyfuss’s tubbiness made him look silly. (This isn’t an inevitable consequence of overweight: Oliver Hardy’s elephantine grace provided a beautiful counterpoint to his fat.) Although casting a short, waddling actor certainly emphasises Roy’s ordinariness, it also emphasises what a condescending conception he is. Struggling against his inexpressive body, Dreyfuss is forced into occasional overplaying – histrionic hyperventilation, for example. And why choose a cerebral actor for the part of an American everyman who becomes a believer in UFOs? Dreyfuss is scrupulously sympathetic but he never really convinces as a man of faith.
[1978]
