Awards & Honors

In 2007, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was chosen by the National Film Preservation Board to be preserved in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.

In American Film Institute polls, Close Encounters has been voted the 64th greatest film of all time, 31st most heart-pounding, and 58th most inspiring.

In 2011, the ABC television network aired a primetime special, "Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time," that counted down the best movies chosen by fans based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and People magazine. Close Encounters was selected as the #5 Best Sci-Fi Film.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind received Academy Awards for Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and a Special Achievement Award to Frank E. Warner for sound effects editing. It was also nominated for Best Director, Supporting Actress (Melinda Dillon), Art Direction-Set Decoration, Editing, Visual Effects, Sound, Original Score

Other awards include:
Saturn Awards (Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films): Best Director, Music, Writing. Nominations: Best Film, Actor (Richard Dreyfuss), Actress (Melinda Dillon), Special Effects

British Academy Awards: Best Production Design/Art Direction. Nominations: Best Film, Director, Supporting Actor (Francois Truffaut), Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Sound

Golden Globe nominations: Best Picture - Drama, Director, Screenplay, Score

David di Donatello Award (Italy) for Best Foreign Film

Directors Guild of America nomination for Steven Spielberg

Golden Screen Award (Germany) for Best Film

Grammy Awards for Best Album of Original Score, Instrumental Composition (both to John Williams)

Hugo Awards (science fiction) nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation

Motion Picture Sound Editors Award winner

National Board of Review Special Citation for Special Effects

Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen

The Critics Corner: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a daring film concept which in its special and technical effects has been superbly realized. Steven Spielberg's film climaxes in final 35 minutes with an almost ethereal confrontation with life forms from another world; the first 100 minutes, however, are somewhat redundant in exposition and irritating in tone. Yet much advance public interest gives the Columbia Pictures release a strong commercial potential." - Murf. Variety, November 9, 1977

"Steven Spielberg's giant, spectacular Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which opened at the Ziegfeld Theater yesterday, is the best--and most elaborate--1950's science fiction movie ever made, a work that borrows its narrative shape and its concerns from those earlier films, but enhances them with what looks like the latest developments in movie and space technology. If, indeed, we are not alone, it would be fun to believe that the creatures who may one day visit us are of the order the Mr. Spielberg has conceived--with, I should add, a certain amount of courage and an entirely straight face." - Vincent Canby, New York Times, November 17, 1977

"Mr. Spielberg, a movie nut who appears to relate everything in his life to movies, has made no...mistake with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the best 1950's science-fiction film I've ever seen, not because it's different in any genre-breaking way, but because it's classier and far more intelligent." - Vincent Canby, New York Times, November 19, 1977

"I thought the original film was an astonishing achievement, capturing the feeling of awe and wonder we have when considering the likelihood of life beyond the Earth. I gave that first version a four-star rating. This new version gets another four stars: It is, quite simply, a better film -- so much better that it might inspire the uncharitable question, 'Why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time?'" - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, reviewing the Special Edition re-release, January 1, 1980

"What has happened is a phenomenon in the annals of film. Director Steven Spielberg has taken his flawed 1977 masterpiece and, by judicious editing and addition of several scenes, has turned his work into an authentic masterpiece." - Arthur Knight, writing about the Special Edition release in the The Hollywood Reporter, July 1980

"An original vision, technically superb, poetic without apparently being aware of it, a movie that for all its fancy technology doesn't shortchange or patronize the ordinary people who are its characters. ... Mr. Spielberg's cuts have, indeed, had the effect of making the domestic problems of Roy Neary [and his family]...seem much less tiresome and much more human--moving as well as comic." - Vincent Canby on the Special Edition, New York Times, August 21, 1980

"As early references to The Ten Commandments [1956] and Chuck Jones's Warner cartoons show, the film seems less concerned with science fiction than with recapturing the wonder of a child's first experience of the cinema, and the surprising thing is that Spielberg moves into this territory so effectively. There are some awkward touches (Truffaut never ceases to be Truffaut, while some of the comedy scenes are a little overplayed), but they're small price to pay for the first film in years to give its audiences a tingle of shocked emotion that is not entirely based either on fear or on suspense." - David Pirie, Time Out Film Guide (Penguin Books, 2000)

by Rob Nixon