The Day the Earth Stood Still

P o s s i b l e  S p o i l e r s

The Cold War drove the imaginations of numerous twentieth century scribes.  Harry Bates was one, and his short story "Farewell to the Master" made great fodder for Edmund H. North, who adapted into the 1951 science fiction classic THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.  The '50s were filled with Red Scare thrillers, using sci-fi as a convenient and workable genre in which to design thinly veiled metaphors.  I feel director Robert Wise made one of the best ones, and while he denies it, also one of the most effective biblical allegories of its time to boot.  But here we go again about interpretations....

There is an object moving across the world at 4000 MPH.  It lands in Washington D.C. A flying saucer, of course. An alien (in human form) named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and a large robot called Gort emerges and assures the visit is in peace.  But a soldier fires upon Klaatu anyway when he produces an object mistakened to be a weapon.  Klaatu is taken to a hospital and heals quickly and entirely, baffling the physicians, one of whom "doesn't know whether I should go get drunk or quit medicine." Gort, while imposing, uses his ocular lasers mainly to simply make rifles and tanks disappear.

Klaatu is on a mission, vaguely explained to the President's secretary.  The alien wants to deliver his message to all world leaders at the same time.  An impossiblity in the political climate, something infathomable to Klaatu, whose planet lives in harmony, without wars.  He is to be held, but soon escapes and assumes the identity of "John Carpenter", taking a room at a boarding house, where he'll meet a widow named Helen (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray), as well as Mrs. Barley, played by Frances Bavier in what appears to be a nearly identical character as Aunt Bea, who she would later play on The Andy Griffith Show.

"J.C" (um, check the initials, and the last name) tries to learn about the human race, and why they are so unreasonable and suspicious.  He meets Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), evidently the smartest and most humane individual in the Beltway.  To him he will reveal why he has traveled millions of miles.  It seems the rest of the solar system is concerned about Earth's development and use of atom bombs. Our very future depends on what we decide to do with it.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL can be taken as total B sci-fi, but Wise, who offers consistently solid direction, plays with a straight face that never (or at least rarely) becomes ridiculous.  His fashioning of Cold War paranoia mixes well with what I consider blatant religious imagery.  The story is consistently engaging and the actors, especially Neal, are very appealing.

The final speech will be troubling for some viewers, and interpreted in numerous ways.  What exactly is being advocated? Totalitarianism? Christianity? There are cases for both.