The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1995.
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (working titles: Farewell to the Master and Journey to the World) is a 1951 American science fiction film from 20th Century Fox, produced by Julian Blaustein and directed by Robert Wise. It stars Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray, Frances Bavier and Lock Martin. The screenplay was written by Edmund H. North, based on the 1940 science fiction short story "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates. The film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.
Why It Rocks
- This film distilled Cold War hysteria to a science-fiction allegory with religious overtones. But it was quiet, measured, and "friendly", in vast contrast to The Thing from Another World -- another sci-fi film released during that same year -- which was fast, edgy and "mean", as the film presents a world where it is too late to contain our enemies, where science bests the military, and where compromise rather than war is the answer.
- While the film exploited a craze for flying saucers and spacemen, its serious, documentary approach has been a pervasive influence on subsequent sci-fi and suspense films, even as most viewers remain oblivious to its crypto-fascist message.
- According to the film's producer, the inspiration came from newspaper stories about efforts to control postwar politics through the United Nations—in particular, the headline phrase “peace offensive.” Disturbed by a “negative” ambience in coverage of the UN, he wanted to prove that “peace is a five-letter word, not a dirty word”, using a science-fiction framework to disguise didactic intentions.
- While adapting the Harry Bates' pulp story and specifying changes in the plot, some of the characters were fleshed out.
- The film is distinctly different from other Fox movies of the time, even though it shares with them a greater use of location footage and realistic details, such as the appearance here of four real-life journalists who deliver exposition.
- Michael Rennie is an astute choice for the alien Klaatu.
- "Klaatu verata nikto" has become one of the most familiar quotes in sci-fi movies.
- With the film only having a $1 million budget, the director used stock footage and existing sets, as well as models and mattes for a lot of the special effects. Other effects were achieved with devices as simple as flashlights. One of the alien’s big tricks—turning off power across the planet— required almost no effort to show convincingly. In fact, much of the film is made up of montages, essentially silent sequences tied together more by associative editing and voice-over narration than by what the shots themselves mean.
- Great work on the soundtrack from composer Bernard Hermann, as he sets the ominous mood that marks the nighttime scenes around Klattu's flying saucer.
Bad Quality
- A troubling aspect for modern viewers is the script’s insistence that peace can only be achieved by giving up freedom. No one at the time (the early 50s) could have mistaken the references to the Soviet Union throughout the film, especially in the implied threat of the robot Gort. Weirdly, the alien proposes a totalitarian regime as the solution to society’s problems. By ceding power to robots, the aliens “live in peace ...secure in the knowledge that we are free of aggression or war".
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