Alien
A heartbeat accents the first strains of music that open Alien: the steady throb of the ship's machinery that keeps the crew alive as they lay in suspended animation. The heartbeat states the theme of the film: confrontation with death. How do characters react when death walks among them? They meet the challenge with courage and assume leadership. They bicker. They become nearly incapacitated by fear. They save their animals.
Each time one of the Nostromo crew members is about to be killed by the alien, the ship's heartbeat becomes audible (except for heartless Ash, who is killed by the crew.) The heartbeat is present when the landing party first sees the alien ship and speaks over their headsets. It must be Kane's, who will shortly be implanted with the alien's offspring and die in the classic "chest-buster" scene. The heartbeat is there as the crew sits down at the dining table right before Kane dies. It's also there when Brett is looking for Jones, the cat, but meets the alien instead. We hear it again when Dallas crawls into the tunnel where he comes face-to-face with the alien, and for the last time as doomed Lambert & Parker gather coolant for the shuttle.
Alien has a stunning sound design overall, with constant whirring, clicks, and clatter from computer tech (outdated to our ears) and simultaneous conversations sounding across intercoms from various parts of the ship. The crew speaks like real people, and not every utterance is significant—this is the everyday grind of a working unit. In the ship's underbelly, bonus-pushers Brett and Parker complain about being underpaid, and their conflict with the captain lends an Upstairs/Downstairs feel to the set.
Audiences in the late seventies had cut their teeth on the sparkling clean spaceships of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, and Lost in Space. Like Grunge descended on '80's rock, Alien entered theaters as the first dirty spaceship. Its damp clutter and labyrinthine darkness were a fresh look, and the film influenced the likes of Ty Franck, one of the co-authors of The Expanse, who has said the movie changed his life as a child. (The space frigate Rocinante has a similar look to the Nostromo.)
In a sequence where Dallas attempts to corner the alien in the tunnels, the authentic sound of panic in Lambert's (Veronica Cartwright) voice creates unbearable tension. She openly displays the fear that all the crew feels. One of my favorite shots comes after the alien kills Dallas. The group strategizes about how to corner the alien, and the camera cuts to a closeup of Lambert. Veronica Cartwright is incredible in the scene. Her face, harshly lit, is so raw—her blue eyes bulge, her skin is red and mottled. Is it method acting or makeup? The film is a master class in character immersion: Lambert's terror becomes our terror. Although she is so frightened she can barely function, she still does her job.
The technique of realistically depicting fear is displayed in the final scene, too, as Ripley sings "You Are My Lucky Star" to herself while she prepares a trap for the alien.
The alien is a marvel to behold with its elongated head and extendable second mouth. It is only one of many nightmarish visions brought to life by the late Swiss artist H.R. Giger's unique vision. I love the way the alien ship's environs match the style of the alien itself. The wetness, dripping water, and saliva that cover the alien's environment and the creature’s face make the nightmare worse. It hides for most of the movie, and the camera shows it only in partial shots, which makes it even more terrifying. We see its entire body only when Ripley blows it out of the shuttle engine.
All but one of the Nostromo's crew met their deaths. Six cast members of Alien are no longer with us: Helen Horton (the voice of Mother), Bolaji Badejo (the alien), John Hurt (Kane), and Ian Holm (Ash). Harry Dean Stanton (Brett) passed away this year, and, notably, Yaphet Kotto (Parker) died last week.