ALIEN: Losing my innocence on LV-426

Rating: 9/10 (22 February 2010)

Back in 1979, for some strange reason I do not remember, I waited impatiently for weeks (or months?) to finally see Alien. Maybe I got a glimpse of the surreal trailer on TV and was hooked by its impressionistic images and stroboscopic editing. That makes sense, I had plenty of time to watch TV in those days. I was only thirteen at the time and watching plenty of American shows.
I remember finally seeing it at the RIO cinema in my little french- speaking town of Sorel near Montreal during Christmas time '79. That was not a great cinema by today's standard. Bad screen, bad anamorphic lens and bad monophonic sound. But when the dissonant strings of Jerry Goldsmith started after the FOX logo, with the slow appearance of the title, I was hooked. And what I remember in my mind of that first screening is in 70mm with THX sound...
I did not know what to expect at all from that movie. I was of course a sci-fi geek who had seen Star Wars at least five times and Battlestar Galactica a couple of times too. But NOTHING prepared me for what I was about to see.
We were introduced to a sci-fi world but in a way that was almost "cinéma-vérité". Unlike most sci-fi films of this time, the story was not written to accommodate big sets and expensive special effects but the other way around. So much details in everything. And all that was casually presented as we were discovering the crew of the Nostromo, waking-up with them in their futuristic environnement but at the same time, feeling at home with them, feeling ourselves part of the crew.
Then, the story shifted to the Alien's planet and it became an odyssey into the unknown. My thirteen year-old mind was petrified from that moment on.
In retrospect, I can say I lost what was remaining of my childhood innocence on LV-426 (The Alien's planet)...
Today, I am waiting for Fox to release the Blu-Ray edition of this movie and I am thinking: NOTHING had ever been presented on a movie screen with such majestic horror.
The biomechanical Gothic design of H.R. Giger for the Alien's environnement and the Alien itself was the biggest contribution of pure art in a movie since "Un chien Andalou".
That contribution, along with the visual panache of a young director named Ridley Scott, a flawless Terry Rawling's editing and powerful score by Jerry Goldsmith achieved what could be one of the most complete work of art that Hollywood ever made.