The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Directed by Robert Wise

Film Review

Science-fiction is a genre which continues to be regarded with a degree of condescension or derision by the majority of serious film enthusiasts, and not without some justification.  Sci-fi movies generally fall into one of two categories.  First, there are those which have a sudden transitory popularity, but then are quickly forgotten because either the story or the effects have dated so quickly - alas, these are in the majority.  Then there are those rarities which become timeless classics, continuing to strike a chord with successive generations and which can be enjoyed by non sci-fi enthusiasts (even critics for the high brow Sunday supplements).  A good example of the latter is The Day the Earth Stood Still.  In sci-fi terms, it may sound pretty unsophisticated - just a human-like alien, his pet robot and a flying saucer - but it is one of the most highly regarded examples of its genre.

The film was directed by Robert Wise, one of America's great filmmaking auteurs, whose credits include such diverse and legendary works as West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965) and The Haunting (1963).  His other sci-fi offerings include The Body Snatcher (1945) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).   Wise was both hugely talented and a notorious perfectionist, bringing an exceptional flair and eye for detail to a head-spinningly diverse range of subjects, which spanned war films, film noir dramas, thrillers, as well as musicals and science-fiction movies.

Whilst it has the familiar B-movie sci-fi trappings (little green men excluded), The Day the Earth Stood Still has a quality and impact which few of its subsequent imitators came even close to matching.  The film's atmospheric black and white photography gives it a chilling realism and immediacy which few science-fiction film of this era had.  That Wise was influenced by the Hollywood horror classics of the 1930s and German expressionist films of the 1920s becomes quite apparent in the final twenty minutes of the film.  There, the high-contrast, expressionist style of lighting and photography gives an awesome power to the silent omnipotent robot, reminiscent of the great monster films of the past.  It's hard to watch this film without recalling Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) or James Whale's Frankenstein (1931).  In its turn, Wise's film would have a significant impact on sci-fi in cinema and popular culture for several decades.

Admittedly, in some ways the film does appear dated.  The storyline is pedestrian and the characters are bland by today's standards, whilst the special effects look pretty feeble even for the 1950s.  Yet, none of this seems to matter.  The film's power lies in the relevance it had, and continues to have, to cinema audiences living under the threat of global war and instant nuclear obliteration.  There are some moments of great poignancy, such as the understated little scene where the boy Billy take Klaatu to visit his father's grave in Arlington Cemetery (just the kind of thing you'd do when you meet an extra-terrestial who's threatening to blow up the world).  The scene quietly laments those who died in World War II - but it may equally relate to any one of the countless conflicts that have taken place since. 

It has been suggested that The Day the Earth Stood Still is a flagrant reinterpretation of the Gospel.  Certainly, the parallels between Klaatu and Christ look pretty obviously once you start to look for them.  (What the robot signifies is anyone's guess - Gabriel, the Angel of Death, perhaps, or maybe the Almighty Himself  - Gort and God do sound remarkably alike...).  It's the kind of morality story which the writer and social philosopher H.G. Wells could have written - one with a sincere appeal for the people of the world to strive for peaceful reconciliation of their differences instead of continuing down the path of conflict which can only end in annihilation.  

However, beneath this apparently benign call for universal peace, there is a worrying undertone.  Klaatu's people have banished war but they have achieved this only by submitting to a form of supreme fascistic control by which anyone who doesn't comply is destroyed.  Surely, an equally terrifying prospect to global extinction is the possibility that one nation on Earth may ultimately have the power to coerce every other nation to do as they are instructed.  Now, who could Robert Wise have had in his mind when he made this film - surely not the nation that was the first to add nuclear weaponry to its arsenal...?

Film Synopsis

The world falls under a spell of expectant dread when a flying saucer appears in orbit above the Earth before landing in Washington D.C.  Before an assembled mass of onlookers, a space-suited humanoid emerges from the alien craft.  He is Klaatu, a representative from another world who has come to deliver an ultimatum to the people of Earth.   If mankind attempts to spread war beyond the confines of his own world, planet Earth will be destroyed.  With the Earth leaders unwilling to meet one another for an emergency summit, Klaatu soon begins to realise the futility of his mission...