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The Day the Earth Stood Still

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The Day the Earth Stood Still is a 1951 science fiction film which tells the story of a humanoid alien who comes to Earth to warn its leaders not to take their conflicts into space, or they will face lethal consequences.

It stars Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray, Frances Bavier, and Lock Martin. Supporting cast includes journalist Drew Pearson. The movie was adapted by Edmund H. North from the story "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates, and directed by Robert Wise. The score was written by Bernard Herrmann and is notable for its use of a theremin.

Contents

Synopsis

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Klaatu (Rennie) arrives in a flying saucer on The Ellipse in Washington, DC, wearing a silver spacesuit and helmet and accompanied by a large humanoid robot called Gort (Martin). As Klaatu exits the saucer, he is met not by politicians, but by soldiers. Klaatu says he comes in peace, on a mission of goodwill; he holds and activates a small device which opens with a snap: before he can explain, he is shot by a soldier who assumes the device is a weapon. In response to the shooting, the robot Gort makes all weapons evaporate, from side arms to artillery and tanks, without harming the soldiers.

This short opening scene develops one of the film's central themes, the human tendency to rush to violence when confronted by the unknown. The mysterious device proves to be benign: as it lies broken on the ground, Klaatu describes it to another soldier as a "gift for your President...with it he could have studied life on the other planets."

First Contact

Klaatu is taken to Walter Reed Hospital, where he quickly recovers from his gunshot wound. The secretary to the President of the United States, Mr. Harley (Frank Conroy), visits Klaatu in his hospital room. Klaatu fails to convince him to organize a meeting of world leaders, where he can present them with an important message that "all humans" have to hear. He is told that not all the world's countries are represented at the United Nations, and later, that the world leaders cannot agree even on a meeting place for this momentous occasion. "I'm impatient when I encounter stupidity. My people have learned to live without it," Klaatu tells the Secretary, upon hearing of the world leaders' infighting. "My people haven't," says Mr. Harley. "I'm very sorry. I wish it were otherwise."

Gazing down at people walking in the hospital courtyard, Klaatu muses aloud that perhaps he (Klaatu) would profit if he were to move among ordinary people and get to know them better. Mr. Harley rebuffs Klaatu, informing him that he is essentially a prisoner in his hospital room. Upon Mr. Harley's exit, Klaatu hears the door being locked and smiles bemusedly.

The Boarding House

Klaatu escapes from the hospital in order to meet a typical human family. He goes to a boarding house and meets a family and other guests there. They are watching a television news special on the escape of the spaceman. He tells them that his name is "Carpenter," taking the name from a laundry label on a suit he has presumably taken from Walter Reed Hospital. Two of the residents of the house are Helen Benson (Neal), an employee of the United States Department of Commerce, and her son Bobby (Gray). Helen is a widow, whose husband (Bobby's father) was killed at Anzio during World War II.

The next morning, Klaatu listens to the paranoid breakfast-table banter of the boarding house residents, who are convinced that the space ship is the work of the Soviets, or Democrats, or some other real or imagined enemy of the Cold War. When Helen's boyfriend Tom (Hugh Marlowe) plans a day-trip getaway for the two of them, Klaatu offers to take care of Bobby.

Bobby and Klaatu

Bobby gives Klaatu a tour of Washington, D.C., including a visit to the grave of Bobby's father in Arlington National Cemetery, where Klaatu learns with dismay that "all these people [were] killed in wars." The two next visit the Lincoln Memorial, where Klaatu is impressed by the inscription of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and concludes that there may be great minds on Earth who can understand his message. When he asks Bobby to name the greatest person in the world today, Bobby replies that the smartest man in the world is a leading American scientist, Professor Barnhardt (Jaffe), who lives "right here in Washington, D.C."

Klaatu goes to see him. The scientist isn't home, but Klaatu uses his abilities to open the door to his study and leaves a "calling card" in the form of a mathematical solution to the n-body problem scrawled on the blackboard. Barnhardt's housekeeper discovers Klaatu and Bobby in the study, and angrily demands that they leave. Klaatu leaves her the address of his boarding house and tells her not to erase his solution from the blackboard.

Klaatu and Barnhardt

Government agents show up at the boarding house and escort Klaatu back to Barnhardt's house. With the military police waiting outside, Klaatu speaks to Barnhardt. They begin with a discussion of Klaatu's solution. When Barnhardt asks "Have you tested this theory?", Klaatu confesses "I find it works well enough to get me from one planet to another," revealing his identity. The scientist dismisses the military guards and tells Klaatu "There are several thousand questions I'd like to ask you."

Klaatu warns the professor that the people of the other planets know that human beings have developed atomic power and will soon apply that technology to spaceflight. Given the warlike nature of human beings, this cannot be allowed. Klaatu convinces Barnhardt to organize a meeting among world scientists, who in turn are to carry Klaatu's messages to their leaders. Klaatu stuns him by informing him that if the message is rejected, Earth will be eliminated. Barnhardt cautions Klaatu to think of a back-up plan in case his message is rejected...a "little demonstration." Klaatu agrees.

Klaatu returns to his space ship that night to program his "demonstration." Bobby follows him and is amazed to see his friend enter the ship. When Tom and Helen return home from their evening out, Bobby tells them that Carpenter is the spaceman. They don't believe him, but when Bobby is headed upstairs to bed, notice that his shoes are soaking wet. Their suspicions grow when Tom finds an obviously expensive diamond in Mr. Carpenter's room. Tom takes the diamond to a jeweler, who exclaims that such a perfect diamond could not have come from Earth.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Following Barnhardt's suggestion, as a "little" demonstration of the seriousness of his message, Klaatu suppresses electric power all over the world (including the ignition systems of individual vehicles) -- with some notable exceptions, such as hospitals and planes in flight. This is the situation referred to in the movie's title. During the blackout, Klaatu is trapped in an elevator with Helen. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he explains more to her than he had told Professor Barnhardt, because, Klaatu explains, his life is in Helen's hands.

Because of the thirty-minute demonstration, Klaatu is perceived as a security threat by the Americans, who decide that he must be taken dead or alive.

Helen now understands Klaatu's real mission. After the blackout is over, Tom confronts Helen with his knowledge that "Mr. Carpenter" is the spaceman. Tom is sure that by betraying Klaatu, he can become rich and famous. "You'll feel differently about me...." "I feel different right now." Helen asks Tom about the impact that betraying Klaatu will have on the rest of the world. "I'm not interested in the rest of the world," is Tom's reply, expressing the movie's theme of the unconcern most people have about the larger world around them. Helen is repulsed by Tom's indifference, and rushes to help Klaatu.

Klaatu is shot again, this time fatally, before he and Helen can reach the scientists' meeting.

Klaatu barada nikto

Concerned about what Gort would do in the event of his death, Klaatu had taught Helen the command "Klaatu barada nikto" just in case. In a dramatic encounter, the huge robot nearly kills Helen before she can overcome her fear enough to blurt out the command and then repeat it.

After these words are spoken, the robot carries Helen into the flying saucer, retrieves Klaatu's corpse, and revives him from death (even Klaatu's technology cannot overcome death, but it is capable of reviving him for a short time, long enough to give his message).

After Klaatu is revived, he steps out of the saucer and speaks to the assembled scientists. Earth, he tells them, can either decide to abandon warfare and peacefully join other spacefaring nations – a peace enforced by the robot race to which Gort belongs – or be destroyed as a threat.

Production details

Principal outdoor photography for The Day the Earth Stood Still was shot on 20th Century Fox sound stages and its studio backlot (now Century City), with a second unit shooting background plates and other scenes in Washington, D.C.: the film's stars never travelled to Washington for the making of the film.

In a DVD commentary track, interviewed by fellow director Nicholas Meyer, director Robert Wise stated that he wanted the film to appear as realistic and believable as possible, in order to drive home the film's core message against armed conflict in the real world.

Wise's background in directing horror (his solo directorial debut had come with producer Val Lewton some 5 years prior) leant itself to a "haunted house" feel to the movie's spookier scenes, with a stark use of deep shadow, often patterned to resemble the bars of a cage. Both high and low angles are used to create the film's pervasive sense of Klaatu's literal and figurative alienation from the warlike people of Earth, or to highlight the unlimited power he represents.

Other scenes of earthly family life are more sympathetically lit and filmed with more conventional angles, depicting the postive aspects of humanity. Care is also taken to establish the character of Klaatu as a real person with emotions, who is sensitive to the social and physical world around him. The character displays a general interest in the mundane aspects of the alien world around him: a music box, a tobacco pipe.

Special effects

Although the film contains its share of dramatic and obvious special effects scenes, such as the destruction of military hardware by the robot Gort, special effects were also used more subtly. For example, the aerial shots of crowd scenes surrounding Klaatu's spaceship were achieved with a combination of optical printing or matte work (to include the Washington D.C. skyline) and a "held take" approach, where the same film is run through the camera for multiple exposures of the same crowd standing in different locations on the studio backlot in order to give the appearance of a much larger crowd.

Other examples of special effects work include rear projection or "travelling matte" work in the scenes depicting Bobby and Klaatu's tour of the Arlington National Cemetery and Lincoln Memorial, and the taxi chase sequence at the film's climax, when Helen and Klaatu are chased by the military. According to the DVD commentary, Wise carefully prepared his shooting list from storyboards so that his second unit would return with "background plate" footage with appropriate action (an MP calling on a radio, an increasing number of military vehicles) for each rapid cut in the complex finished sequence.

The extensive use of both in-camera and post-production effects are not suprising considering that Robert Wise had edited Citizen Kane, which made extensive use of both in-camera effects and the optical printer developed by Linwood Dunn. The optical work in The Day the Earth Stood Still is often so seamless that it escapes even the modern viewer's notice, and is a tribute to the careful preparation which was Wise's long time style of working.

Critical reaction

The Day the Earth Stood Still has been interpreted to contain religious symbolism, especially because of Klaatu's death and subsequent resurrection, and his chosen name "Carpenter" (the profession of Jesus Christ). Klaatu does explicitly refer to the "almighty spirit" when asked whether Gort has the power over life and death (Robert Wise lets Klaatu distinguish Gort from the Spirit NOT to be almighty to evade protest from Christian organizations).#redirect [[Template:Fact]]

The surprise ending of the short story "Farewell To The Master" by Harry Bates (where it is revealed that the robot — originally called Gnut rather than Gort — is the master and the alien man, Klaatu, the servant) was not used in the movie, where this remains an open question.#redirect [[Template:Fact]]

The movie appears as the seventh film listed in Arthur C Clarke's List of the best Science-Fiction films of all time (where it appears listed just above Clarke's own [[2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)|2001: A Space Odyssey]].)

In spite of the images which have passed into the national culture and become cliché — a race of killer robots, a spaceman in a silver suit and a flying saucer, etc. — its message of peace and dark outlook regarding human society stands out from 1950s science fiction, and it has become a classic. Filmed in black and white with minimal, but effective special effects, the movie is a model of brisk, economical storytelling and direction.

The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Interpretations

Many see value in the film's statement of universal moral standing, finding an association with Klaatu as a well-meaning upstart, whose time had not yet come. This interpretation holds that it is the fearful hostility of "the government," not the will of the people, that was the main obstacle to Klaatu's plan. Some speculate that the film and others like it contributed to a popular philosophy that blossomed in the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

Others find resonance in the themes of the ascribed "uselessness" of the United Nations and of the assembling of the world's scientists to hear a message of peace. This view tends to see Klaatu as a misinformed or naïve idealist, unfamiliar with the nuances of world conflict.

The ultimatum given by Klaatu smacks of totalitarianism. There is real tension here as one gets the feeling that the strong admonition of Klaatu for earth to "join us" may very well be masking much more sinister motives. Perhaps the fate of the world would be worse than if left to its own devices. Perhaps Gort is the master and Klaatu is the servant whose mission is to deceive one more civilization into slavery. Why should we trust alien beings simply because they are — or appear to be — more advanced than ourselves?

Still others see spiritual implications. The use of the name "Carpenter" by Klaatu has been seen as a reference to Christ. Klaatu is, like Christ, misunderstood by mankind, and they attempt to kill him. Like Christ, as well, he is resurrected from what at first appears to be fatal wound. His message, like Christ's, is one of tolerance and peace ("love your neighbor"). Finally, like Christ, he is ascends into the heavens at the conclusion of the film.

Trivia and popular influence

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