Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB

Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967)

*** (out of 4)

This short film from writer-director George Lucas was certainly the most important one he ever made for a number of reasons. For one, it got some national attention, which also meant critics were aware of his name. For two, it led to him meeting Steven Spielberg and we know what happened from there. And thirdly, the film would eventually be turned into a feature.

The story is pretty simple as it takes place in a futuristic world where a man (Dan Natchsheim) is trying to escape but no matter where he runs someone is monitoring him.

As of me writing this, I actually haven't seen the feature so I have no idea of knowing what Lucas changed or whatever but for the most part this here was pretty interesting. I thought the highlight was clearly the visuals since Lucas didn't have too much money to work with yet you still got the impression that you were watching something set in the future. The "story" was a bit all over the map but I guess that was to be somewhat expected and I'm sure it was expanded for the feature.

The film departments of UCLA and Southern California University had an annual film competition for students from both schools at a time when they and New York University were about the only schools in the country offering a degree in cinema. In 1967, I attended the showing at UCLA's Royce Hall, and George Lucas's THX-1138 was a standout work among many very good ones. Not only was it the audience's favorite, but the judges awarded it best picture. Lucas was called to the podium to accept his award. He seemed nervous and shy at the microphone, but then startled as he was interrupted at the microphone, apparently a surprise to all on stage, by a lawyer from Warner Brothers who announced that Warners was offering whoever won the competition the opportunity to turn it into a feature. That was of course George. It seemed an eternity while he stood speechless, mouth open. Warners already had the young Francis Ford Coppola under contract, so they assigned him as producer to George. I then saw the resulting feature "THX 1138" in 1971 at a theater in Hollywood. It was not great commercial success, but as we all know, the success of the George Lucas career is legendary.

This is found on the 2-Disc George Lucas Director's Cut release of THX 1138 that came out in 2004. His student film. You're probably more familiar with the remake that he made(and everyone who's watched any of his work may have seen the four numbers appear somewhere, and he used the prefix as the title of his sound-system). This and especially the theatrical version of '71 had an ambivalent effect on his career in the field; the studio had no idea how to sell the latter, and it led to the downfall of the original dream of what American Zoetrope was. It also proved that he could make something otherworldly and unique, and he might not have made Star Wars(or it could have been less than it was) if not. This is very experimental, and its visual side is compelling and interesting. The sound is creative(given the constraints), and editing is skillful. In 15 short minutes, this manages to convey many of the themes he would explore to a greater extent in the feature-length quite subtly and without anything feeling staged. The acting is satisfactory. There is a bit of disturbing content in this. I recommend it to any fan of cinema that takes chances. 7/10

Sure it may be no-budget, sure it may be using film equipment and film stock that's not to the 'studio' standard. But, as someone who has come out of being a film student, I look at George Lucas's award-winning student short film with a good deal of awe. And Lucas, who has described himself as being a filmmaker who is split between the avant-garde and the more 'mainstream' films (the latter personified film-wise in Star Wars and Indiana Jones), goes to the extreme of his powers with his visual prowess. It is surreal in that it tries to express an idea through an unconventional means, with a story but without being stuck to it by any means. And because it's so short there's only so much time to get the message across with such little film.

Electronic Labyrinth takes just a slice- the more action packed and suspenseful slice- from what would become the feature film of THX 1138, using absolutely no dialog. That to me is a phenomenal, but very dangerous, step to take. There's always the chance, especially with young, experimental filmmakers, to go into the over-indulgent, or rather just to go in over your head with abstract concepts that just don't connect out of likely just not being well made. Here the quasi-beating over-the-head of image and sound works, because it's a film about technology, about the control of it over people, and it makes a very basic kind of statement of going against the overwhelming power of it. The hero of the film for almost all of the film does a lot of running, down corridors, down spacious, domineering spaces, leading up to a sort of bleak ending.

It may not get enough thematic ground like the feature-version does, and the lack of dialog sets a kind of gap between a viewer not ready for the combination of twistingly sci-fi visuals of the screens and numbers and videos and such. But it's got guts, and that's what I like to see in student films; the cliché that this is a "sign of things to come" is not far from the truth (ironically, after the feature-film of this, it would go more towards the mainstream for Lucas, but you never know).

While monitored and pursued, a man races to escape through a futuristic labyrinth.

Lucas had had an idea for a long time "based on the concept that we live in the future and that you could make a futuristic film using existing stuff". Fellow USC students Matthew Robbins and Walter Murch had a similar idea which Robbins developed into a short treatment, but Robbins and Murch lost interest in the idea, whereas Lucas was keen to persist.

Because of the USC's Navy connection, Lucas was able to access filming locations which would not otherwise have been available to him: the USC computer center, a parking lot at UCLA, the Los Angeles International Airport, and the Van Nuys Airport. Much of the filming was done at night, with some at weekends.

This film's value is in the fact it is a root. By itself, it is a very good student film, but still just that: a short student film. But we know what came of this. It turned into a feature-length film, it caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, and soon we had "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones". Without this, we would have none of that, and Harrison Ford would be unemployed.