1951: Interstellar Overture

 

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Directed by Robert Wise

92 min.; U.S.A.; Black and White; Mono

A transcript of The Past Through Tomorrow Show

Airdate: Sunday, October 7, 1951

This is T.O. Morrow.  Today we're going to discuss atomic warfare, the exploration of outer space, flying saucers, and a new science fiction (SF) feature film titled The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).  We're going to examine these things as free thinking citizens, perhaps as cinephiles, but not as armchair jesters or water-cooler wiseacres.

Not long after World War II reached an earth-shattering conclusion with the detonation of two atomic bombs over Japan four seemingly disparate issues somehow unexpectedly intertwined in American minds. First came the dawning sense that this once largely isolationist country had been thrust by victory to an unprecedented position of power, influence, and responsibility in the world.  Yet optimism over this new reality was tempered by the realization that our former ally the Soviet Union also assumed a new dominant position of power.  And the result, as we are all well aware, ladies and gentlemen, is that the world is tensely divided between two ideologically opposed areas of influence, one based on democratic principles and the other on communism.  

Secondly, some more than others are convinced that science offers a means to relieve our global tensions by shifting our attention and energies to the exploration of outer space, the new and final frontier.  After all, ours is a pioneering tradition, they say, and atomic powered rockets could theoretically become the covered wagons of a new space age.  Other opinions hold that if we blaze a path to the stars we would likely only extended our earthbound conflicts into the heavens.  And there are those who fear pioneering into outer space on the grounds that it will risk contact with unknown, possibly hostile extraterrestrial forces.

A look of anxious fear touches the faces of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public when they sight a flying saucer in the skies over Washington D.C. in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

And speaking of extraterrestrial forces: Ever since a gentleman named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing a number of disc shaped aircraft in the skies near Mount Rainier, Washington in June 1947 there has been a rash of similar sightings of "flying saucers" around the country.  Accompanying this phenomenon is no small amount of speculation about the nature of these sightings.  Some suggest that these flying saucers are quite real and represent secret advanced military aircraft, either ours or, more alarmingly, those belonging to some other power.  Others have theorized that these craft carry extraterrestrial visitors intent on contacting us.  Then there are those who call the whole thing a hoax.  Still others have tried to explain this phenomenon as some form of mass hysteria.  Whatever the truth, my friends, this flying saucer business remains a matter of public concern.

Finally, and most serious of all, is the pressing issue of what to do with the discovery of atomic energy and the awesome devastating power of atomic weapons.  Many wish to embrace all of the potential good that might result from further study into atomic energy.  Yet others suggest that it represents an area into which science has already wandered too far.  There are claims that, like Dr. Frankenstein, we have unleashed something terrible upon the world and now have a responsibility to control our creation.  Many simply wish to turn away from the whole matter and destroy these weapons before they destroy us all.

Though relatively few of us have been directly involved in making decisions about these far-reaching and curiously intertwined issues almost all of us have found ourselves associated with them through newspapers, radio, magazines, television, and motion pictures.  Yes, even motion pictures, that otherworldly arena of escapism, magic, and make believe, has involved us in these all-too mundane matters.  And that is where we are going to turn our attention to now, to a picture Twentieth Century-Fox released a few weeks ago called The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Director Robert Wise uses a silhouette shot to build mystery and suspicion around the arrival of a stranger (actually it's the extraterrestrial visitor Klaatu in disguise) to a Washington D.C. boardinghouse in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

If you haven't seen the picture yet I urge you to do so because it is informed by all of the complex issues mentioned here today, and many more.  Yes, it is a science fiction feature but director Robert Wise avoids the kind of gimmicky juvenilia we've come to expect from such things as Captain Video (1951) or the old Flash Gordon series.  Advanced technology, a requirement of any good science fiction picture, is on display here--a flying saucer capable of interstellar travel, an indestructible robot armed with a disintegration ray, a reanimation machine.  These mysterious technologies play integral roles in the narrative, but Wise tends to focus on natural tendencies in human nature, such as a distrust of the unfamiliar and the quick turn to violence as a means of resolving conflicts, to move his story along. If anywhere, the greatest feeling of otherworldly-ness results from Bernard Herrmann's spine-tingling score in which he makes great use of an obscure electronic instrument called a theremin.

Stylistically, Wise constructs his picture with the kind of semi-documentary realism that makes suspense and crime pictures so thrilling to watch. He's not above using a dash of the classic horror film style when it suits his purposes either. Though the film is concerned with complex issues, Wise avoids the trap of producing a message picture--wordy, polemical, problematic from a technical standpoint, and, frankly, sometimes quite boring to sit through. Wise, and producers Darryl Zanuck and Julian Blaustein, should be commended for translating the aforementioned big ideas to the screen while remembering that most of us go to the movie theater to be entertained. They must have sensed that only the fantastic, eerie, and technology-based science fiction genre could encompass such heavy ideas and still move our senses through dynamic twists and turns like an amusement park roller-coaster.

Klaatu is shot in the back while running toward us in this thrilling image from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Now, allow me to review what happens in the feature in a few broad strokes.  The picture begins when Klaatu (Michael Rennie), an extraterrestrial diplomat on a mission for a federation of planets, arrives in Washington D.C. in a flying saucer.  Klaatu's attempts to contact mankind are frustrated by all-too human xenophobia.  His initial interstellar overture of friendship is misconstrued and he is shot and wounded.  His request to speak before an assembly of all world leaders is denied because mutual distrust makes such a thing impossible to stage.  Soon, Klaatu goes undercover and becomes a fugitive hunted by the military.  He befriends a war widow (Patricia Neal), her young son (Billy Gray), and a Einstein-like famous scientist (Sam Jaffe) who agree to help him convene an group of international "great minds."  Now military forces catch up with him and he's shot and killed.  Gort, his indestructible robot guardian, revives Klaatu long enough for him to present his message to the assembled scientists.  In truth, it is an ultimatum: if earthlings extend their warlike ways into outer space they will be annihilated.  The suggested alternative is to give up all aggression and irrevocably place the planet under the total authority of a race of robots like Gort.  At the first sign of violence these robots will destroy the aggressors.  With that said, Klaatu and Gort reenter their spacecraft and return to the stars.

Based on early indications, The Day the Earth Stood Still is drawing audiences and making money, something Hollywood desperately needs since being divested of their theater chains by a ruling of the Supreme Court, coming under investigation from the House Un-American Activities Committee, and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in admissions to the growing popularity of television and other leisure activities.  It isn't unreasonable to predict that the success of this picture, along with the recent successes of George Pal's Technicolor science fiction adventure Destination Moon (1950) and the science fiction/horror hybrid The Thing from Another World (1951), will trigger a science fiction picture boom in the coming months.  Certainly there's enough inspirational SF material available in John W. Campbell's popular Astonishing Stories magazine to craft any number of screenplays.  But, if science fiction should turn out to be the only genre in which filmmakers can make entertaining films that also discuss the serious matters of our times then let's hope that the film moguls will insist on producing intelligent, high-quality features like The Day the Earth Stood Still and avoid the temptation to produce a series of cheap, low quality bug-eyed monster movies simply to cash in on a fad.

Now let's take a moment to reflect on Klaatu's frightening ultimatum: give up our aggressive ways if we intend to explore outer space or face utter annihilation.  You may have recognized that some of my fellow commentators have stated that this film espouses pacifism.  Perhaps they have the picture confused with a prophetic movie of the early 1930's titled Men Must Fight (1933).  That film predicted a second world war six years before the actual fact, and reminded audiences that the only real way to achieve pacifism is if we all refuse to fight.  The Day the Earth Stood Still, on the other hand, makes the case that peace can only be achieved if assurance of total annihilation is the only alternative.  The pacifism theorists overlook that, backed by the threat of deadly force, Klaatu demands a compulsory and irrevocable loss of liberty and self-determination.  Make of that what you will, my friends, but such ideas are nowhere to be found in the definition of pacifism in this commentator's dictionary.

Regardless of how we categorize Klaatu's solution to war, his words are likely to become a source of discussion among commentators, critics, and movie fans.  In these discussions let us remember that in reality his ideas do not represent a more advanced extraterrestrial form of wisdom nor a kind of thinking unknown to our own policy-makers.  In fact, a group of very real scientists proposed a similar answer to the atomic crisis only a few years ago.  Yes, Klaatu's otherworldly logic mirrors one side of a very earthbound debate.  Let's take a moment for a brief recap:

Here comes the robot monster Gort...jagged shadows and Patricia Neal's wide eyed look of fear and off-kilter, half-supine body language recall the look and feel of 1940s low-budget horror pictures.

In 1946, a group of scientists hoped to simplify the incredibly complex issues surrounding the advent of atomic energy and the possibility of atomic war in a film strip titled How to Live With the Atom.  Perhaps you saw it in your local school or at a public meeting, or read a condensed version that ran on page 81 of the New York Times on June 9, 1946.  In the film strip, produced by the National Committee on Atomic Information and the Federation of American (Atomic) Scientists, these learned folk presented their argument in clear, simple language: "We must get together to tie the atom down.  Atomic energy must be taken out of our own hands and those of other countries and brought under world control."  These scientists wanted to "save the world from the Atom bomb" by joining the combined might of all nations on Earth to enforce world-wide control because "without force to make the signing nations keep their word, someone will just whip out a bomb and use it."  In truth, I don't know if the scientists' plan is workable.  What I do know is that, just like the distrusting politicians in Mr. Wise's science fiction film, our world leaders have not all gathered together and solved the issue yet.  For now, our own policy-makers and those of the Soviet Union have only agreed to disagree over these matters and we appear to be settling into a frigid stalemate, what some have termed a cold war.

Speak softly and carry a big Gort: Backed up by deadly advanced technology, Klaatu delivers his ultimatum to the assembled scientists of Earth.

The Day the Earth Stood Still doesn't allow the group of international thinkers a chance to debate Klaatu's ultimatum before the end of the picture.  However, that doesn't mean that we viewers should remain mute on the subject.   Let us consider if the policy proposed by our own scientists but unheeded by officials in 1946 isn't preferable to current conditions which only seem to have us all feeling uneasy, to say the least.  Will we heed Klaatu's warning and find the will to suspend aggression?  Is his solution workable?  Shall some future generation revisit these concerns or can we find the strength to rise to the challenge and solve them now?  I frankly admit that I don't know the answer, my friends.  But I do know that the outcome is ultimately up to you.  I can say this: given the unthinkable implications of the recent reports of development of an even deadlier doomsday weapon, the hydrogen bomb, and the complexity of the politics involved in all of this business, it is little wonder that the producers of The Day the Earth Stood Still looked to the heavens for answers.  

Well, that's all for Sunday, October 7, 1951.  

Until next time, o' friends, remember: keep one eye on the skies!

This post written by Thom Ryan
Copyright 2008 Thom Ryan Some rights reserved

Comments

[Brian]

I'm loving these pastiches, Thom! Particularly impressed that you can delve into so many aspects of this film- including problematic ones- using such a mode.

And congratulations are in order as well- you've made it halfway to the current year!

[Jacqueline T Lynch]

Another excellent wrangling together of film and popular culture and history, with present-day relevance. You do this so well.

[Thom]

Thanks Brian, Jacqueline. You've both articulated so well what this post is all about. I've been thinking that if motion pictures aren't windows on the past then what happens when we view them as mirrors looking on a mirror of the time in which they're produced--art reflecting life reflecting art reflecting life, ad infinitum. I'm so glad that you're both supportive of these alternative creative attempts to imagine history through film. And this particular picture, which is so expertly crafted and speaks so loudly of its time, and also of the new possibilities and old limitations of human civilization, turned out to be perfect for experimentation. And I've got to admit, imagining a 50s-era commentator with his own show and then writing through that character's voice, opinions, style was great fun.

[Joe Thompson]

Thom: Good choice. I don't watch much science fiction, but this is a movie I always enjoy. People still argue about the meaning of "Klaatu barada nikto."

Regards,
Joe Thompson ;0)

[Thom]

Hi Joe,

Okay, I'll bite. What do you think klaatu barada nikto means?

btw, Did you ever see this flick in a theater? It seems like all of that low key lighting and mysterioso music would really swallow you up watching this on the big screen.

[Joe Thompson]

Thom: I have never seen it in a theater but I agree with you that it would be a great experience. I forgot to mention too that Patricia Neal's performance is a cut above what we see in many science fiction movies.

As to "Klaatu barada nikto," there is a whole article on the subject in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaatu_barada_nikto). The argument is between people who think it is a code phrase that tells Gort not to destroy the world. It may not have actual meaning in the alien language. Others argue that since it includes Klaatu's name it may be translated as something like "Klaatu has been killed, you must resurrect him."

And we mustn't forget the rock band Klaatu. Some people thought they were the Beatles secretly reunited. "Sub Rosa Subway" is a cool song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN24NSBLGm4

Regards,
Joe Thompson ;0)

[Thom]

Great stuff, Joe,

I couldn't agree more about Patricia Neal's performance. One of those speaking on the commentary track of the DVD version I viewed (can't remember if it was Wise or someone else) said that when she acts you can "see her thinking." That's a good description of what I liked about her performance too. Her face says lot even (or especially) when she's saying nothing. She certainly has no problem emoting fear in that scene where she's being menace by Gort. Her character is interesting too because she sort of reflects attributes we expect from 1940-50s hardboiled fiction toughguys: a kind of reluctant sleuth dragged into a situation she doesn't really want to be part of but putting the pieces together right before our eyes, a bit cynical but doing what she has to do, even disobeying authority, and the consequences be damned because she feels that she has the right reasons for doing it, etc.

In the Gort-speak debate I lean toward the "re-animate Klaatu" hypothesis because that's what follows in the story. Whatever it means it is ideal for the purposes of the film, isn't it? It has a fine otherworldly ring to it.