The story opens with a flying saucer arriving in Washington, D.C., landing in the middle of that great symbol of Americana--a baseball diamond--after flying past all of the capitol’s most important monuments and buildings. It is immediately surrounded by armed soldiers, and soon the sleek hull of the spacecraft opens and out strides Klaatu, a handsome, articulate humanoid ambassador from an interstellar version of the United Nations. Klaatu was played by Michael Rennie, who was then an unknown theater actor cast specifically for his anonymous good looks and stern, yet approachable demeanor (director Robert Wise felt that a movie star like Spencer Tracy, who was originally considered for the role, would be too distracting). Klaatu states clearly that he has come in peace, but when he reaches inside his silvery tunic for a gift to present to the U.S. President, a trigger-happy soldier jumps to the conclusion that he is reaching for a weapon and shoots him.

Alas, Klaatu is only wounded, and after spending an evening in the hospital, he requests a meeting with all the Earth’s leaders so that he may deliver an important message. Not surprisingly (then or now), it is impossible for the Earth’s various political enemies to agree on anything, much less a place to meet an interstellar visitor, and in frustration Klaatu escapes the hospital and tries to blend in with human society in order to get a firsthand look at what humankind has to offer. He rents a room in an ordinary boarding house and befriends a widow named Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her elementary-aged son, Billy (Bobby Benson). It is through his involvement with these “ordinary” people that Klaatu comes to realize that humankind has potential that its various leaders, bogged down as they are in ideological turmoil and self-centeredness, fail to exhibit.

Unlike most modern science fiction movies, The Day the Earth Stood Still is not a special effects extravaganza, although when FX is required, it is remarkably effective. The opening sequence depicting the saucer flying through the skies above Washington, D.C., and then landing on the baseball field are quite convincing, even though they hew closely to a 1950s ideal of what an alien arrival might look like (when first spotted, the saucer is a white light in the sky, quite reminiscent of various UFO photographs of the era). It is convenient, of course, that Klaatu looks completely human (it is never suggested that he ever looks anything but), although he arrives with a companion, a 10-foot robot named Gort (Lock Martin) that acts as his protector by disintegrating anything that poses a threat. While Gort’s supposedly impermeable metallic suit is obviously flexible in all the wrong places, the depiction of his destructive capabilities is credible enough. One of the film’s greatest effects, though, is the musical score by Bernard Herrmann, which relies heavily on the strangely evocative, electronic moanings of a Theremin. While the score, having been imitated and parodied thousands of times, now sounds like a sci-fi cliché, it was downright otherworldly in 1951 and strong evidence of Herrmann’s risk-taking genius.

As a piece of Cold War-era Hollywood filmmaking, The Day the Earth Stood Still is a particularly intriguing specimen. Most know that Klaatu’s message, which isn’t delivered until the film’s final moments, involves a warning about nuclear weapons and the dangers they pose, a deliberately unsubtle evocation of the era’s most heated hot-button issue. Yet, what is most interesting is Klaatu’s description of his own society’s solution to violence, which is nothing more than the threat of their own annihilation if they resort to warfare, hence the existence of Gort as one member of a massive police force that can destroy any planet that poses a threat to the rest of the universe. It is a decidedly mixed message, one that has been interpreted in multiple ways, most intriguingly as a reflection of the United States’ might-makes-right approach to global policing. At the same time, though, it can be seen as a thought-provoking contradiction, which posits that violence can be contained only through the threat of even greater violence.

The depiction of humanity in the film is decidedly mixed. While Helen and her all-American inquisitive son are obvious reflections of the best that humankind (or at least Western society) has to offer--that is to say, fundamentally decent and unassuming--there are less admirable representatives on hand, mostly notably Helen’s scheming fiancé, Tom Stevens (Hugh Marlowe), an insurance salesman (natch) who, once he figures out who Klaatu is, can’t wait to turn him over to authorities and reap the benefits. All the military representatives and politicians are likewise questionable, while scientists, personified in the frizzy-haired, Albert Einstein-like physicist Prof. Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) are posited as the best path to Earth’s salvation. At the end of the film, humanity is given a reprieve, but on the condition that it takes Klaatu’s warning seriously and rethink its approach to international relations, a message that has great resonance even if no one seems to pay it much attention ... then or now.

Copyright ©2008 James Kendrick

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