‘One more fine technician for the Dream Factory’? George Lucas’s Early Film Career, 1964-1971

This essay traces George Lucas’s development as a filmmaker from his arrival at film school in 1964 to the release, in 1971, of his first feature THX 1138 and his decision to commit, for his follow-up, to a semi-autobiographical project about teenagers that would eventually be released with the title American Graffiti in 1973. The discussion of the thematic and stylistic characteristics of Lucas’s early film work is contextualized with accounts of his shifting outlook on his career, the professional networks he joined, box office trends and transformative changes in the American film industry at the time.