Spiritual Science Fiction for the Whole Family: Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1970s Hollywood

In this essay I examine Steven Spielberg’s contribution to the fundamental reorientation of Hollywood cinema in the late 1970s (back towards all-inclusive family entertainment) by taking a closer look at the critical reception of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (both in 1977 and in 1980), and by placing the film in the context both of his career as a filmmaker (going back to the amateur films he made as a child) and of important trends in Hollywood cinema of the late 1960s and early to mid-1970s. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the religious, or spiritual, dimensions of Close Encounters and to its status as family entertainment.