A new appreciation of this film's excellence

Rating: 10/10 (6 February 2005)

Seven members of a space mining cargo ship who are headed back to Earth are awakened from hypersleep when their ship detects a signal from an intelligent civilization on a small, uncharted planet. When they locate the source of the signal, they find more than they bargained for, and all of their lives are endangered.
My feelings about this first film in the Alien series have vacillated slightly over the years. I loved it when I first saw it as a young teenager in the theater back in 1979. Later, I wasn't as enamored with it, and had actually rated it as low as a 7 out of 10--at one point believing it to be my least favorite of the series. Now, however, my appreciation of the film has matured a bit, and I'm back to thinking it's a solid 10 out of 10.
The film's strong points are rooted in director Ridley Scott's focused commitment to sustaining a desolate, dark atmosphere and gradually building suspense over the course of the film. Alien is unusual for its era in its pacing, its lack of comic relief, and its refusal to provide breaks from its growing tension. All three of these facts make it a somewhat "difficult film". It's not recommended for light viewing. It's not a "popcorn film". You have to be in the mood to sit down, slow down, concentrate, invest emotion, and let yourself be enveloped in the film's world.
With Alien, Scott has created a kind of bleak tribute to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). This is evident in many characteristics of the film, such as the graceful slowness of the cinematography, editing and much of the action in the first section of the film, including sustained pans across sterile-looking environments and wide external shots of (a) hulking but elegant spacecraft, the personification of the ship's computer, known as "Mother" here rather than Hal, a few subtle instances of classical music, the surprise discovery of a monumental structure on another celestial body, and so on.
However, there are no instances of pleasant psychedelia here, no retreats into dreamworlds, no messages of hope, no benevolence from alien beings. Alien is strictly concerned with making its sci-fi an issue of classic horror. At a base level, it is about a malevolent monster, first encountered in a dark, Gothic environment and later chasing our heroes through a cross between a haunted house and crypt-like labyrinths.
Much has been said about visual artist H.R. Giger's alien and production design, and the film wouldn't be nearly as successful without it. Giger is largely responsible for the look of the beacon ship on the small planet, both its exterior and interior, the cocoon later encountered on the cargo ship, and the creatures. His work also inspired a lot of smaller elements, as can be seen in doorways, pipes, and other features of the cargo ship. Like most of his work, these features are a combination of metallic and organic, mechanical and biological, futuristic and Gothic. They complement the austere Kubrickian sensibility in a surprising but completely successful way.
Scott also uses simple effects like steam, as well as unique lighting and sound effects to help build the film's thick tension. These techniques gradually become more conspicuous as the film goes on, finally culminating in a claustrophobic symphony of flashing lights, constantly hissing pipes and hoses, and an incessant audio alarm.
Finally, the last key to the excellence of the film is the cast. Although a somewhat stereotypical movie-world ragtag bunch, their characterizations provide more depth than the norm, with Sigourney Weaver as the standout, in perhaps the defining role of her career, and one of the more admirable filmic portrayals of a woman--she's the smartest, most sensible, strongest, and certainly most sexy of the bunch.