THX 1138 (1971)

Directed by: George Lucas | 86 minutes | drama, science fiction | Actors: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie, Ian Wolfe, Marshall Efron, Sid Haig, John Pearce, Irene Forrest, Gary Alan Marsh, John Seaton, Eugene I. Stillman, Jack Walsh

For those who only know George Lucas as the man behind the six popular ‘Star Wars’ films and who are curious about other work based on that, his debut ‘THX 1138′ may be disappointing. ‘THX 1138′ is not a smooth romantic adventure film, but a hyper-stylized vision of the future set against a minimalist backdrop, with little dialogue and many close-ups of meaningful facial expressions. ‘THX 1138’ is much rawer and more idiosyncratic than his later work and fits completely into the Hollywood film climate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where there was room for young talent to make experimental films on a small budget that often also became commercially successful. , think ‘Easy Rider’. However, not ‘THX 1138’, who flopped with a profit of only two million.

Yet ‘THX 1138’ is not a pretentious art film but an atmospheric socially critical SF in the spirit of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984”. THX 1138 is the name of the main character played by Robert Duvall. He lives with a woman, LUH 3417, in a complex of white spaces and tunnels in an undeveloped world composed of subway tunnels under construction, white corridors of some factory or just huge white spaces without borders. Lucas here sketches a clinical society in which emotions, love and sexuality are suppressed by drugs and daily life is closely monitored by means of cameras and robots. The story develops around THX 1138 who, out of dissatisfaction, decides to stop taking drugs and as a result experiences authentic feelings again and thus gets into trouble with the authorities. In an immeasurably large and wallless white prison, where the criminals roam but have nowhere to go, THX 1138 comes into contact with SEN 5241, played by perennial supporting actor Donald Pleasence, who steals the show here as a crazy and unreliable computer programmer.

THX 1138 undergoes the classic transformation we know from the protagonist from “1984”: dissatisfied with the status quo, he begins to suspect that there must be more and explores the limits of his limited world and eventually does an escape attempt that results in a spectacular car chase (a prominent theme that we encounter in practically all of Lucas’s sequels, think of the car races in ‘American Graffiti’ and of course the animated flying scenes in the ‘Star Wars’ series). The premise of ‘THX 1138’ may not be that original, but the highly stylized design, the intense play of the actors and the special alienating atmosphere make this debut film very worthwhile. However, perhaps not for the SF enthusiast pur sang and certainly not for those who expect a fantastic action blockbuster in the spirit of ‘Star Wars’. In ‘THX 1138’ Lucas is still really a director and not the manager of an entertainment empire.