Synopsis for
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) More at IMDbPro »

Strange events are happening all over the world: a UFO is said to have appeared in the Mojave desert in New Mexico, a long-ago lost ship appears in the middle of the Ghobi desert, and many Indian people start to chant a tune they have heard coming from "above", and some airplanes have sights of flying saucers. A team of people are investigating all these phenomena, specially Claude Lacombe (renown French director François Truffaut) and his interpreter Jean Claude (Philip Dodds)

In the USA, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is trying to find his way at night. He's close to home, but is looking for the place he has to go to in a map. He is a technician who has to solve a problem with an electrical blackout. While waiting to cross a railway, everything seems to go crazy around him. His torch won't work anymore; all of a sudden, some mailboxes open themselves, and a light lands on his truck. Looking out of the window, he is flashed several times for what seems a UFO. Roy will drive after the three small flying saucers and a small red light.

Mainwhile, Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey), a little boy of around 6, wakes up because all his toys start playing themselves and making noise in the middle of the night. He goes out of home on his own. He lives in a cheap home nearby a forest. Dressed in his pyjamas, he goes out. A toy police car wakes up his mother Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) as well. From her window, she calls out for him, but Barry enters the wood anyway, laughing alone. Jillian runs after him. When she catches up with him, Barry is standing up in the middle of a curvy town road. He seems stunned, dazed. Jillian arrives just in time to save him from being run over by Roy.

The UFOs disappear among cloudy and stormy weather. Many people have seen them, and they wait all through the night in the same curve of the same road for the UFOs to appear again, hoping for a friendly sign. Roy, Barry and Jillian are among those people.

During daylight, they all try to go on with their lives. However, it seems that they can't cope. Barry repeats a lullaby over and over again. Jillian tries to draw a mountain she has never seen, and Roy seems to have gone crazy. He makes all kinds of strange attemps to create a sculpture of the same mountain than Jillian. First with shaving foam, secondly with mashed potatoes. The three children of the couple, Brad, Sylvia and Toby (Shawn Bishop, Adrienne Campbell and Justin Dreyfuss), become silent and frightened as well, after a terrible row with plenty of shouting on everybody's part. As a higher level of Roy's brand-new eccentric behaviour, he starts pulling out some small trees from his home garden in a frenzy, and also he steals his neighbour's duck pond metal rail in plain daylight. His wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) is getting more and more frightened because of her husband's hectic behaviour. She cannot take it anymore and leaves him. She takes her children with her, while neighbours stop doing their everyday chores to look in amazement at the final row of the couple.

Now Roy can create his mountain sculpture without being disturbed. He makes it so huge that it occupies all the kitchen. While he is talking on the phone, he finally realises what he is so obsessed about. The famous anchorman Howard K. Smith (himself) is announcing on TV that Devil's Peak is being evacuated, because there is a deadly gas leaked in the atmosphere. They show some images of the place, so Roy decides to make the journey there immediately.

At the same time, Barry has disappeared. He had been kidnapped by the supposed energy of a UFO. Jillian had tried to prevent it, closing all doors, windows, and even the chimney place, but it is useles. Barry feels attracted by the lights and he goes into them through the dog trap in the main door. Newspapers will laugh about Jillian's evidence before the police, claiming that she alleges that "some clouds kidnapped my son", and treat her like a demented person.

The following day, Roy is driving in the opposite direction. He arrives at the nearest train station to the mountain, where hundreds of people are boarding a train in panic, climbing into the wagons through the windows and even getting on top of some coaches. The military police are watching all the operation. There, Roy finds Jillian, who wants to go to the same place than him. They get out of the station quietly helped by the chaos. Jillian is carrying two pigeons in a small cage, in the hope that, if there is any poisonous substances in the air, the birds will die before she does so. They drive together across fields and empty roads with many cows and horses dead along the way. They get close to their destination, but they are stopped by the miliatry police and the two French investigators dressed in white, astronaut-like outfits and gas masks. One of them forces Roy and Jillian to get into a white van, while taking the cage with the two birds, now completely dead. Jillian, Roy and another man jump off from the helicopter which was going to take them out of the area. They had taken off their masks, proving that there is no real danger in breathing the alledgedly deadly air. The three runaways make it to the mountain, being followed by armed soldiers and several helicopters. The third man gets gassed out and passes out so the two main characters are the only ones who make it to the other side of the mountain.

There, Jillian and Roy find a kind of runway lane surrounded by scientifical devices and cameras by all sides except one. There are people all over the place, some of them armed with heavy weaponry, and the two Frenchmen are also there. Jillian and Roy look at the sudden weather changes hidden behind some mountain rocks. The UFO's appear, altogether with the smaller red light. They fly so close to them that they could have almost touched them.

The UFO's and the official people maintain a kind of dialogue: they play the tune which Barry and the Indian people sang. They use a kind of huge keyboard and a screen with light and colours. Everything is successful. Roy goes down the mountain after having kissed Jillian but she prefers to stay hidden behind a rock. He thinks he is going to be captured by an army officer, but the man is running away, hiding himself on the portable toilet facility, a scene which will be repeated later on Spielberg's Jurassik Park film. The UFOs go away. The French people see Roy, but they let him be.

The scientists are going to start to analyse all the materials they have recorded. All of a sudden, the hugest UFO of them all appear, and they all go back to their positions. Again, there is the tuned music conversation, accompained by coloured lights. The music moves faster and faster until it dies out. Everybody is watching, breathless.

The UFO is opened. Through the below part of the device, several people (and a dog) who had previously disappeared, walk out of the UFO. They are all healthy and calm. One of the last ones is Barry. Jillian leaves her hiding place and goes running to him, hugging and kissing her son while crying tender tears. Barry does not look traumatized or hurt in any way.

The UFO door opens again. First, a long-legged and long-armed creature appears. The next instant, some twenty grey-skinned aliens appear and get out of the UFO. They have got no hair, they are naked, and they are as tall as a child. One of the aliens repeats the hand movements which represent the music tune.

Some volunteers, including Roy, decide to go into the UFO with the aliens. No aliens stay in Earth. They all fly out of planet Earth into the million-starred celestial copola.