The premise, however mimicked over the years, still intrigues. The spacecraft descends upon Washington DC, the stoic alien emerges from within, the gasping crowds look on, the rifles, canons and tanks are at the ready. Before he can get a word out, before he can offer his enigmatic little metallic flower/toilet cleaner thingee, the alien’s preemptively shot in the chest by jittery US military. He’s taken to hospital, is examined, and recovers completely. In appearance and mode of expression he seems one of us, more or less—he’s played by English actor Michael Rennie—but is very emphatically an Other. He speaks of “your months,” “your miles” and “your Walter Reade Hospital.” He speaks to his robot in a language that sounds like Japanese. He’s a chameleon. His name is Klaatu. He’s come a long way to give us some sobering advice. He seems unshakably civil, but if his words aren’t heeded, he promises to exact an apocalyptic wrath beyond comprehension.
Though made during those first tender years of the Cold War and wielding an overt message in response to the proliferation of nuclear arms, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) pulsates with age-old anxieties. It’s a religious impulse, perhaps, this desire to be visited by some colossal vision, illuminated by some transcendent Word, chastised and threatened with awesome punishment. There’s a desperate longing for oblivion blended deftly into this entertainment. We are rendered small by it. But the eagerness to repent and defer to a higher authority deserves some serious consideration.
Directed by Robert Wise, written by Edmund North, beautifully photographed by Leo Tover, mesmerizingly scored with double Theremin in the mix by Bernard Herrmann, the film is far too superbly crafted to be dismissed as period kitsch, even if he appearance of Gort, Klaatu’s mostly immobile giant robot, its featureless visage the subject of many creepily inert close-ups, locates it firmly within the imaginative limits of contemporaneous science fiction. Following Klaatu’s unmet demands to confer with ambassadors from every country in the world, the story slides from the grandiose to the intimate and back again, with some of the most memorable scenes occurring during Klaatu’s escape from captivity and quiet immersion in everyday American life, his spooky arrival at the rooming house bathed in shadow, or his final taxi ride with Helen (Patricia Neal), a single mom who along with her happy little boy represents our best hopes for betterment. The fact that Klaatu mixes in so easily is of course the point—the Other we fear so is really not so Otherly after all. It’s a fable in service of tolerance and multiculturalism.
Yet if we allow ourselves to play devil’s advocate, to set to one side the supposed moral clarity of Klaatu’s call for the cessation of violence, if we look carefully at this offer we can’t refuse, there’s a most contradictory nature to it that feels ironically akin to recent US foreign policy and the clash of civilizations. I come from a distant place where we know better, Klaatu declares, and your earthly ways don’t jive with ours. Frankly, we can’t tolerate it anymore. Change, Klaatu instructs. Be like we are, and make peace. Or we’ll kill you all. Hegemony rules, and whether international or interplanetary, whether the subjects of the new empire are in the Middle East or the Midwest, the ostensible simplicity and benevolence of this proposal is compromised by the condescension and threat behind it.
So Klaatu is the enlightened alien Other, yet is also quintessentially American, or, if you prefer, human, doing what humans are wont to do when granted immense power. While this reading may very well counter the intentions of Wise, North, et al, addressing this aspect of The Day the Earth Stood Still isn’t meant to belittle it but rather reveal just how complex and durable its proven to be. It’s a virtue of the best science fiction that its value to audiences will shift with time and revelation.
Fox’s new two-disc special edition of The Day the Earth Stood Still, presumably prompted by the theatrical release of the remake, may not offer alternative readings, but it is loaded with supplements to help appreciate the film’s gestation and legacy. A making-of featurette has amusing testimony from Neal—who apparently couldn’t stop laughing during the filming—insights into the film’s technical innovations, and some terrific weird facts, such as Gort’s later life as a performance accessory for Bozo the Clown. There’s also a fun little doc on flying saucers that covers the basic territory—Kenneth Arnold, Betty and Barney Hill, Roswell, et cetera—and equally welcome profiles of North and of Harry Bates, the forgotten magazine editor and author of the course material. These docs are annoyingly cutty, with too many commentators and not enough content from each of them to justify their appearances, but they still give you a flavour of the conditions of the film’s development. There’s also a new audio commentary from Nick Redman, John Morgan, Steven Smith and William Stromberg that, like their commentary for Fox’s recent release of Garden of Evil, focuses exclusively on Herrmann’s music.
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