Welcome to the first installment of Atomic Age Cinema, where I will be writing about what made the science fiction movies of the “Long Fifties” both wholly of their time and completely timeless.
The Day the Earth Stood Still represents the best of this final pocket of films I’m quite passionate about, but haven’t yet written about on this site. I’ve written about Charles Bronson and thus the spaghetti western and ’80s action schlock. I’ve written about ultra-violent ’70s martial arts movies from Japan. I’ve written about Godzilla and the endless joy that series has brought me. And most recently, I wrote about the Universal Monster movies of the ’30s, ’40s, and a little bit in the ’50s.
I find myself frequently feeling the need to defend the honor of 1950s science fiction films against many ill-informed attacks. When people talk about these movies, they tend to talk about how boring they are, or about how silly they are, how poorly dated. I think many people think of the kinds of films that the series Mystery Science Theater 3000 would lampoon, and indeed there were many terrible films released in the post-war sci-fi boom. But there were many great ones, filled with a genuine curiosity for how life on other planets might work, without sacrificing the opportunity of genuine dread.
The 1950s sci-fi imagination is endlessly fascinating to me, and is the source of many of my favorite media. Whether in beautiful black and white (this film or The Twilight Zone) or color (The War of the Worlds or The Fly), science fiction of the “Long Fifties” – an era that I’ll define as being between the end of World War II in 1945 and the final crewed mission of the Mercury Program in 1963 – rarely disappoints. It represents both optimism and terror towards a rapidly changing world, informed by the creation of the United Nations just as much as by the development of the atomic bombs. Many great films of this period play into both these hopes and fears.
The Day the Earth Stood Still may very well be the best of these films. Released in 1951 by 20th Century Fox, the film features some incredible talents of the era, with future Oscar-winning director Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music) at the helm, future Oscar-winning screenwriter Edmund H. North (Patton) writing the screenplay, and of course the incomparable Bernard Herrmann doing the score.
The score will likely be first thing you take note of, because it absolutely grabs you. The second the 20th Century Fox logo disappears and that theramin kicks in, you know you’re in for a good time. The “Prelude/Outer Space” track to me is the auditory representation of what science fiction is. It’s odd, beautiful, dark, and ethereal.
The film itself is an odd combination of elements that have aged like fine wine, and others that have aged like milk in the sun, admittedly. The score itself straddles that line. It’s incredibly of its time, but was also quite innovative, and it works very well for the film.
Another way in which the film has aged well is its limited use of effects, opening with a shining spaceship flying over and landing in Washington, D.C. While this was probably amazing in its day, the fact that this is one of two scenes in the film to feature these kinds of optical effects makes it age that much better. You don’t have time to be distracted by dated special effects. The storytelling and filmmaking speak for themselves.
The story follows Klaatu, an alien ambassador who arrives on Earth with a message of hope and peace. When he’s shot the second he takes out a device that looks like it might be a weapon, his nine-foot-tall robot, Gort, takes action, using a ray from its visor to disintegrate weapons and tanks.
Gort is the film’s most identifiable iconography, and also the character I expect to be the greatest hurdle for any modern viewer. While the black and white helps a little, there is no hiding that this is indeed a man in a costume. There are even multiple scenes later in the film in which we see the costume’s legs band looking more like foam than the metal it is supposed to be. That having been said, there is a simple charm in seeing this giant robot (portrayed in-suit by the gangly 7’7” Lock Martin) lumber around awkwardly.
That is certainly one of the joys for me when I watch ’50s and ’60s science fiction. Sometimes what I want out of science fiction is thoughtful storytelling and meaningful allegory. Sometimes I want goofy robots. This film provides both, but with the quality at a premium.
Once in the hospital, Klaatu makes it clear to the President’s secretary that he has a message for everybody, and will only deliver it with representatives of every nation present. This proves impossible with Cold War tensions, however, as the Soviets refuse such a meeting unless it’s in Moscow.
Fearing his warning is falling on deaf ears, Klaatu escapes, and assumes the identity of a man named Carpenter, as he takes up residency at a boarding house where he befriends a young boy and his single mother.
One of my favorite scenes is when Klaatu takes Bobby out on the town and they visit Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, and the spaceship. Billy Gray plays the role with such “gee golly” enthusiasm that it’s both kind of funny and thematically quite powerful. Klaatu has come with a message of peace, but realizes due to geopolitical paranoia that a threat is the best way to prove his message’s importance. And yet Klaatu – ignorant not just of the Earth’s politics but its people – now sees that this is a world filled with joy and innocence, and one that’s suffered enough from its wars.
Klaatu eventually introduces himself to the most brilliant scientist in Washington, and uses him to contact the rest of the world. Bobby and his mother also discover that he’s the fugitive alien, and this leads to a chase that gets Klaatu shot and killed, only to be resurrected aboard the spaceship by Gort – one of the few things the film has in common with its source material, the Harry Bates short story “Farewell to the Master.”
Despite its lack of faith to the source material, this is one of the best science fiction scripts ever written. Plus it has enough dated ’50s sci-fi aspects to make it adorable. The appeals to the film are both for its complexities and its simplicities.
When I speak or write of this movie, I use superlatives, because the movie more than earned them. Michael Rennie’s Klaatu is my favorite Christ-figure in film. It’s a very good performance that captures the magnanimity of a representative of a peaceful and possible future, and a threat that humanity could not possibly understand, but has good reason of which to be terrified. While the story primarily concentrates on humanity’s inability to understand him, it’s a layered story that has time to detail Klaatu’s inability to understand humanity as well.
In my humble opinion this is the best Cold War movie ever made. While the Cold War may be over, we clearly are experiencing a boom in interest in films about atomic weapons with Oppenheimer and Godzilla Minus One. The message of calling all nations of the world together to unite in a common goal of peace and atomic disarmament continues to seem like a pipe-dream to this day, so for better or worse the movie remains as politically relevant as it ever was. The Cold War tensions enhance the film’s science fiction, because the film’s portrayal of the unwillingness of the nations to unite looks like pure pettiness to this alien unfamiliar with our practices. We are alien to him just as he is alien to us. The film is about how in order to survive we need to break down these barriers and allow hope to triumph over cynicism, to stop seeing each other as threats and start seeing one another as ally’s. It is funny how much and how little has changed since then.
Best Sci Fi movie
In the 1950 – 1970 range!!!