National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Universal Pictures released E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in June 1982, directed by Steven Spielberg. The film became the highest-grossing release of its time and remains a defining work of American cinema, blending suburban family drama with science fiction in a way that resonated across generations. Its cultural footprint — from John Williams's score to its iconic imagery — has only deepened in the decades since its release.

This cell, titled Gertie, captures Drew Barrymore's youngest Elliott sibling mid-reaction alongside E.T. in what appears to be a continuous sequence of frames from a single shot. The mutual scream between Gertie and E.T. is one of the film's most recognizable comic moments, and seeing it preserved across consecutive frames gives the cell a rare sense of motion frozen in time.