Scene Study: E.T. (1982)
A dark and brilliant overture
by Alexandre Tylski
The E.T. main title is entirely black and white (a reference to the
"childhood" of motion pictures perhaps) with, as a musical accompaniment,
a series of weird and scary sounds, similar to those used in JAWS in 1975.
A feeling of uneasiness permeates the audience. For an entire minute, we
face the unknown (but with a touch of the familiar). Then, a sudden silence
in the darkness. Steven Spielberg plays with us and our fears without showing
us a single shot. The first image appears but we cannot distinguish it
clearly. The first shot of the movie should have been reassuring, it should
have been a shot enabling us to leave the primitive, frustrating, and dark
ambiance we were thrown into, but this is not the case. Instead, Spielberg
shows us the night sky, a moonless sky. The sky is black, with only a few
stars breaking through, shyly upon the screen, like small, white holes
in a length of black velvet. It is like the dawn of man. We are disoriented
and disturbed. Are we on earth? Or are we floating in the middle of the
universe, lost and far from home?
But then, a flute (an instrument as full of holes as the starry sky)
can be heard. The flutist lightly performs a motif which will conclude
the movie (a motif written as a shortcut, a summary, or a "sketch"
of the main theme, as if this motif was its genesis). The flute is the
instrument of fairy tales, probably because it is timeless and belongs
to every culture. We then feel more comfortable - even if the solitude
of the solo suggests to us the upcoming exclusion or abandonment of one
of the characters of the film (because of the absence of the group, the
absence of the orchestra).
In any case, John Williams, through the use of this flute announces
a crucial theme of the movie: the introduction of a small, solitary entity
into a huge and frightening universe. This flute solo is in perfect opposition
to the large and almost infinite shot of the sky - or the contrast between
the infinitely small and the infinitely great, between the microcosm and
macrocosm (or between David and Goliath). It foreshadows what the movie
is about to tell: the initiatory trip of Hop O'my Thumb who has to survive
despite the ogre (Spielberg openly refers to this famous tale at a later
point in the film, with the candy scenes). After showing us the sky, the
camera slowly descends, taking us into a wide forest with big fir trees.
We have landed at the same time as the camera (in fact we have landed with
the camera). What interests Spielberg is, thus, not really the sky but
what is about to happen on earth now. Spielberg has said it many times:
he is more fascinated, as a film maker, by the confrontation of fantasy
with everyday life (such as CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, 1977 or
even POLTERGEIST, 1983) rather than by science-fiction (STAR WARS, 1977).
Williams, at this point, does his best to give enough "space"
to his instruments as well as a concrete dimension, as a sort of musical
naturalism, in order to make them enter inside the pores of the movie in
a convincing and realistic way. When we see the top of the fir trees, Williams
uses a triangle as a whimsical allusion; the sharp of the triangle and
of the fir trees look similar. The triangle (which symbolizes spirituality
and transcendence, two important themes of the film) is also as twinkling
as a star and thus imparts a sound, or a "poetic reality" to
the sky filling up with stars, which we see in the backdrop.
The triangle is accompanied by the rest of the orchestra, a harp (which
is often the complementary colour to the flute), strings and a French horn.
The hornist then repeats the motif introduced earlier by the flute. As
a true echo, the horn gives great depth to the image, echoing as it does
the night sounds of the forest, adding a mystical element to the sounds
and images. The instruments and the forest become a whole. Music starts
to blend with Nature. This style of chasse-croise, or this overlapping
between what we see and hear, will continue throughout the movie.
After the sound of frogs croaking in the distance (frogs appear again
later in the film - it is interesting to note how much E.T. looks like
a frog), the wind can be heard in the branches. Williams seems to recreate
the cold wind as well as the fog through an abstract, mysterious, dreamlike,
almost religious (he uses an organ) composition with long and ghostly notes
(the rhythm is slow). These notes, rather low and solemn (and "nocturne"),
perfectly fit the fluent style of the camera moves and cross fades which
show nothing really precise or clear except the harmony between music and
mise-en-scene.
The lack of melody (we hear just the silhouette of a motif) reinforces
not only the primitive and ineffable aspect of nature but also the mise-en-scene
(both of which are deeply linked) and it fills the gap left by the absence
of dialogue in the six-minute opening sequence. Williams' score replaces
words and gives a face, a personality, to the unseen and the invisible
(the phantasmagoric dimension of the scene).
Gradually, the tense and disturbing atmosphere of the scene becomes
tender, the orchestra goes from low notes to high notes: we see E.T.'s
fingers (he becomes more human), a tree-trunk looks like a human face (the
human connection with, and alienation from, nature), a rabbit observes
the scene, mirroring our own observations, then the flute "reappears".
After a brief rest, a bell can be heard for the first time as we are shown
a low-angle shot of the forest, the enormous tree trunks simulating the
pillars of a great cathedral. And Williams' use of bells refers not just
to the images but also to the subtleties of the screenplay, as when Eliot
dresses as Quasimodo (the world's most famous bell-ringer) for Halloween.
The point of view shifts and we are now looking at this Notre Dame-like
forest through E.T.'s eyes. We become E.T., seeing what he sees, and the
lyricism and grandeur of the music unites us with him on a universal level.
The high notes here have an almost romantic feeling, as at the beginning
of a love story, and E.T. becomes part of our lives for the first time:
he becomes "us", sharing our awe and spiritual respect for the
natural world. E.T. (or "J.C.") is hidden in a bush (the burning
bush?) and contemplates the city from up on the hill (Mount Sinai?). At
that moment, a sudden, frightening roar disrupts the peaceful setting,
as big, dazzling trucks roughly intrude and break the harmony (as well
as the rhythm and tone of the music). Here, Spielberg and Williams reference
Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (1936). The forest in the E.T. overture
is full of friendly animals: there is a rabbit (as a substitute for the
duck in Prokofiev's tale), an owl (replacing the bird in a way) and predators
(the roaring trucks symbolizing the wolf, or the hunters). E.T., like Peter,
has wandered, imprudently innocent, too far into the forest. When the trucks
arrive, Williams uses a melody, as threatening as the wolf musical theme
(you can hear a violent use of brass and drum, as a mix of the wolf theme
with the hunters theme), to symbolize the "key character" (curiously,
the actor Peter "Coyote"). We will not see his face until just
before the end of the movie, which is also the case with the rest of the
adult characters, because the film stands for the world as seen through
children's eyes.
Peter and the Wolf is also a way for Prokofiev to translate creatures
and Nature musically. Williams does the same here with great inventiveness
and force. When the spaceship takes off, making the branches thrash in
the wind, Williams has used drum beats to recreate the fury of this wind,
which heightens the intensity of the separation between E.T. and his people.
When the spaceship slowly disappears in the sky, Williams once more uses
the triangle, in an energetic way, as if the sounds created in violently
striking the triangle were invisible dust left by the passage of the spaceship
through the sky, as a metaphorical residue of cymbals (or, maybe, the pixie
dust in Peter Pan that allows the Darling children to fly to Neverland?).
From this rupture emerges the union of E.T. with our world. The overture
scene, beginning with the starry sky (and a triangle), ends (with the triangle)
with a view over the city lights looking like another sky, another galaxy.
Police sirens can be heard in the distance and we will hear those sirens
again at the end of the film. The structure of the movie is cyclic. Its
core is cyclic, so is the score. Circles are a repeated visual motif in
E.T.
As opposed to the vertical or horizontal lines of fences, roads or trees,
Spielberg shows us what is circular, rounded or oval: bicycle wheels, the
Moon, E.T.'s coffin, the clock, etc. It is not excessive to include in
this list the musical instruments we hear throughout the film, such as
the cymbals and tympanies (both as round as the Moon or Sun). These circular
objects impact the audience's subconscious on a purely primitive level.
When E.T. is chased, in the overture of the film and when the spaceship
is about to take off, Spielberg shows us, very briefly, a spectacular shot
of the circular gate of the spaceship. Williams uses, consciously or not,
at that very instant, wonderful and powerful cymbals. However, the famous
backlighting shot of the bicycle flying before the Moon is not accompanied
by symbolic cymbals, but by a series of notes repeating themselves infinitely
(going up and down). Williams' score is deeply visual in E.T. and always
inspired by nature (as well as human nature).
In E.T., the circle often symbolizes freedom, childhood, imagination,
generosity but also death and time. It is the two-fold aspect of things,
just as a cymbal has two sides, two dimensions, two faces. But the circle,
for many people, is probably, above all, a symbol of harmony. The harmony
between humans and the natural world. The harmony between Steven Spielberg
and John Williams who have reached, with E.T., the apex of cinematic collaboration
and imagination. It is clearly this harmony which will enable these two
artists to remain forever in the small and legendary circle of the greatest
magicians of the cinematographic arts.
Courtesy of TRAX ZONE http://www.traxzone.com
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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