NFR Project: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

Dir: Robert Wise

Scr: Edmund H. North

Pho: Leo Tover

Ed: William H. Reynolds

Premiere: Sept. 18, 1951

92 min.

“Gort – Klaatu barada nikto.”

It’s not just one of the most intelligent and compelling science-fiction films ever made; it’s one of the most intelligent and thoughtful films ever made. It’s a perfect example of the science-fiction genre’s power to use elements of the fantastic to create a commentary on the virtues and foibles of the human race.

From the beginning, this movie was intended to send a message. Producer Julian Blaustein was looking to make a film that would be a cry for world peace, an appropriate ambition in the fraught early days of the Cold War and the threat of atomic annihilation. He searched sci-fi literature until he found the 1940 short story by Harry Bates, “Farewell to the Master.” He turned to the project over to screenwriter Edmund North, who completed it with the aid of sci-fi writer Raymond F. Jones.

North deliberately made the story a paraphrase of the life of Jesus. The main character appears, preaches tolerance and peace, is murdered by the state, is resurrected, and ascends into heaven! Not too subtle. Still, North created an intriguing script full of apt philosophizing while not sacrificing the complexity and depth of the characters involved. This film assumes the audience’s intelligence.

An alien spaceship enters Earth’s atmosphere and is picked up on the radars of the world. It lands on the Mall in Washington, D.C. An enormous robot and a silver-clad figure exit. The robot destroys some of the offensive weapons around him with a burst of glowing light. Of course, the figure is shot by a soldier. He is captured and taken to a military hospital.

There we learn he is Klaatu (Michael Rennie), an emissary from beyond the stars who has come on a mission to share with the entire world. The powers of the world must disarm and embrace the end of violent conflict. Given that mankind has discovered atomic energy and rocketry, the Earth is now seen as a potential threat to the rest of the universe. Klaatu states that, if humanity goes on as it has, the Earth will be destroyed.

The U.S. government does not agree that a meeting of all the nations of the world can take place, given the tensions and divisions in the world. Klaatu then escapes, donning the identity of a Mr. Carpenter (another obvious Jesus nod). He registers at a nearby boarding house, and befriends young Bobby (Billy Gray) and his mother Helen (Patricia Neal).

Eventually, Klaatu/Carpenter obtains a meeting with Prof. Barnhardt (the great Sam Jaffe), the leading scientist of his day. Barnhardt vows to gather representatives from around the world to hear Klaatu’s speech. Klaatu wonders whether a demonstration of his power would help the world recognize the gravity of the situation; Barnhardt suggests something “dramatic, but not dangerous.”

The next day, Klaatu stops all the electric energy on the planet (save for hospitals, planes in flight. etc.) for a half-hour. That gets everyone’s attention. Klaatu waits for the evening to come to make his speech – but he is turned in to the military by Helen’s crass boyfriend Tom (Hugh Marlowe), who seeks fame and fortune for ratting out the “space man.” While escaping the troops, Klaatu is shot dead.

However, he has told Helen what to say to Gort the robot in case his death occurred. “Gort – Klaatu barada nikto.” She dashes to the robot and recites the line. Gort goes off, obtains Klaatu’s body, returns him to the spaceship, and in a long, engaging scene restores him to life. Gort, Klaatu, and Helen exit the ship. Klaatu admonishes the crowd gathered there one more time, and flies away.

The message is unmistakable – get your act together or die.

Robert Wise was a brilliant and versatile director; as he did in his third film, The Body Snatcher (1945), he paints his composition in strong, shadowy contrasts, faces illuminated starkly. He uses deep focus. He places every significant element need for the story in the shot, and eliminates all superfluous detail. This results in a very rich, engaging style that never lets you go, a virtue in any director.

His casting is perfect. Michael Rennie has a remote, ethereal style that fits our conception of a “space man.” Patricia Neal as Helen goes on a journey as well. She is the stand-in for the audience. She hears Klaatu’s message and agrees to aid him. When her boyfriend Tom turns Klaatu in, Helen declares to him that “she is not getting married to anyone!” She liberates herself from (Earth)male dominion. By film’s end, she’s seen the inside of the spaceship and she has earned Klaatu’s affection. She undergoes a life-changing, self-actuating experience.

The special effects, by Melbourne A. Arnold and Hal Miller, are outstanding. They are low-key but commanding. The vaporizing of various objects and people is conducted competently. The spaceship, constructed with the help of Frank Lloyd Wright, is just abstract enough to remain intriguing, inside and out. (It seals itself, seamlessly and impenetrably, when it closes.) The scene of Gort dissolving a cast of superplastic he’s placed in, burning it slowly to the ground, is handled adroitly.

As to the music: this was Bernard Herrmann’s first score after moving to Hollywood from New York. It is famously disremembered as the first film score to use the unique, eerie electronic instrument the theremin. If you are playing at home, know that the first use of the theremin was in the score for Odna (1930) by Dmitri Shostakovich. It was used by orchestral arranger Robert Russell Bennett in 1944’s Lady in the Dark, and Miklos Rozsa used it in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). It was a known commodity.

But Herrmann really made it iconic. He makes his opening theme a pun on Richard Strausss’s Thus Spake Zarathrustra, and moves boldly forward into musical language indebted to no one but himself. He scored the soundtrack for electrified violin, cello, and bass; he uses TWO theremins, “two Hammond organs, Fox studio's Wurlitzer organ, three vibraphones, two glockenspiels, marimba, tam-tam, two bass drums, three sets of timpani, two pianos, celesta, two harps, one horn, three trumpets, three trombones, and four tubas.^”

This concerted effort of excellent craftspeople remains a standard of its genre.

“I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. Now, we of the other planets have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more... profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.”

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Duck and Cover.