241. The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

Directed By Robert Wise

Synopsis

A UFO comes to earth to deliver a message of cease and desist to the people of earth in what concerns nuclear warfare. The people of earth are less than receptive, and the messenger Klaatu has some trouble putting his message across. He eventually does.

Review

I am a big Sci-Fi buff, and this was a real treat for me, this is really the start of the modern(ish) Sci-Fi film, the first Sci-Fi thriller and an extremely widely influential film for all that.

You can see the repercussions of this from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind to Battlestar Galactica, but the film is worth watching for more than its influential qualities. The film has some extremely impressive special effects (for 1951 of course) as well as a pretty good plot, which could have been put across more forcefully, but still works quite well.

This is of course a "B movie", but very much on the high scale of it, and if you add the talent of composer Bernard Hermann you end up with a pretty good film indeed, and not just for Sci-Fi fans. The acting is quite competent throughout with the last performance by Sam Jaffe before he was blacklisted. A Good film. KLAATU BARADA NIKTO!

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Religious allegory is woven throughout the film. Allusions to the story of Jesus Christ can be seen as a means of supporting Klaatu's character and his message of peace: Klaatu, upon arriving on Earth, escapes the government and prefers to stay with common people. Klaatu having the temerity to lecture the obviously-Jewish elderly-Einstein-figure of Professor Barnhardt (played by Jewish actor Sam Jaffe with Einstein's hairdo) on his own blackboard subject, is a parallel to the young Jesus lecturing the rabbis in the temple. Klaatu's death at the hands of soldiers echoes the death of Jesus; just as Jesus' crucifixion was carried out by soldiers, so also is Klaatu's killing. Jesus is removed form a sealed tomb by the angel, and Gort removes the body of Klaatu from a locked jail cell. Klaatu's friend Helen plays the part of Mary, asking the questions about what is happening. Like the resurrection of Jesus, Klaatu is revived for a short time by the robotic Gort. Klaatu gives his climactic speech and then departs earth in his spaceship; in Biblical accounts of Jesus' life, he gave a final address to his disciples before literally or figuratively ascending into heaven (New Testament, Acts Chapter 1). In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is sometimes called the "carpenter's [Joseph's] son", and like Jesus, Klaatu adopts the Earthly name "John Carpenter".

The contemporary rendering of the Christ story was deliberately written into the film by screenwriter Edmund North: "It was my private little joke. I never discussed this angle with Blaustein or Wise because I didn't want it expressed. I had originally hoped that the Christ comparison would be subliminal." In a 1995 interview, producer Julian Blaustein explained that the studio censors balked at the portrayal of Klaatu's resurrection and limitless power. At their behest, a line was inserted into the film: When Helen asks Klaatu if Gort has unlimited power over life and death, Klaatu explains that he has only been revived temporarily by advanced medical science and states that the power of resurrection is "reserved to the Almighty Spirit." In this ending, there are two final (and often overlooked) allegories, in that Jesus repeatedly made references to his being subject to and less power than his Father, and in the implication that, even though he was leaving, we would be watched to see how we would behave without direct supervision, with a return (and judgment) at some future time.

Klaatu Barada Nikto: