Critics reviews

One of the strangest cases in the history of cinema is George Lucas. Because Lucas made this absolute masterpiece, THX 1138 (1971), which is one of the most wonderful and radical films ever... the most visionary, critical, plastically and formally perfect film ever. And then, he was also the one who killed all the freedom of the 1970's by making Star Wars and a number of other awful films. I wonder how he deals with that in his mind, being the best and worst thing that happened in Hollywood.

The depth of this differential, this span between the old George and the new George, only became clear to me a few years ago, when I had an interconnected movie epiphany that clearly established THX 1138 as not only Lucas's best film, but as one of the ‘70s' most powerful political films.

The surprising thing about George Lucas's first feature (1971), a dystopian SF parable now digitally enhanced and expanded by five minutes, is how arty it seems compared to his later movies: off-center ‘Scope compositions reminiscent of Antonioni, striking white-on-white costumes and sets, a highly inventive sound track by cowriter Walter Murch. Yet the film is just as claustrophobic as Star Wars, and its ideas are equally shopworn, drawing on Orwell, Huxley, Kubrick, and Godard's Alphaville.