RETURNING TO
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
AND HOW GORT TAUGHT US TO HATE THE BOMB.
Every once in a while, a film comes along that sums up the Zeitgeist of our times and no more so than this movie. So picture the scene kids: its 1951. The United States of America is teaching its citizens to Love The Bomb, while they sweat it out in a Mexican Standoff with the Soviet Union. Nuclear annihilation could come at any given moment, but the world was about to be thrown into doubt, as a little Hollywood film suddenly landed in Washington DC.
A film that largely challenged the need for mutually assured destruction and stated (in no uncertain terms) that it was ok to just Hate The Bomb and all that it stood for. That film was 20th Century Fox’s: The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951).
BASED ON A BOOK
Based on the 1940 novel Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates, the original story told of an alien space craft landing in Washington DC, who’s pilot (Klaatu) is shot dead by a lunatic, leaving his henchman Robot (Gnut) motionless outside the ship. Eventually Gnut retrieves ‘voice recordings’ from Klaatu’s corpse, (to make a clone), before returning to outer space, revealing to the narrator, that he is "The Master" of the human race.
The essence of the novel later became the movie, with scriptwriter Edmund H. North, making changes, that included changing Gnuts name to Gort and giving Klaatu a much larger part to play in world-peace and warning us of the dangers of nuclear conflict.
With that in mind, there were very few who spoke out against the ensuing Arms Race for fear of losing their jobs. As a result, The Day The Earth Stood Still addressed these issues head on: speaking out for the millions of people who had no voice of their own, to stand up to McCarthyism and the insanity of nuclear holocaust.
REAL INFANTRY WERE USED.
Production wise, the film required a reluctant military involvement, as a flying saucer lands on the grassy lawns near the Washington Monument: surrounded by tanks, anti-aircraft guns, missiles and so on. However, The American Department Of Defence actually hated the script and wanted nothing to do with it but ultimately The 3rd Armoured Cavalry At Fort Meade, Maryland (nicknamed The Brave Rifles) finally agreed to participate, supplying the necessary hardware to pull off these fantastic scenes.
But it was with all likelihood, that they were not fully aware of the facts. You can just imagine that the producers probably told their bosses, that it was just for a ‘training exercise’, or a publicity stunt or some such.
COLD WAR HEATING UP
For its time, The Day The Earth Stood Still was a brave film, in a period of extreme prejudice, social anxiety and paranoia. And its easy to understand why. At this point in our precarious history, there was no such thing as the internet. Tv & Radio dominated the flow of information. A veritable Iron Curtain of mistrust had descended upon Europe and there were more nukes pointed at each other, than a post apocalypse caveman could shake a stick at. Propaganda was the name of the game.
Public information films such as Duck & Cover (1952) were being churned out to the masses, showing us how Burt the Turtle and little Jimmy can survive the initial three minutes of a nuclear strike by simply ducking behind a bush! But don’t worry kids, you’ll be fine. If the blast wave doesn’t kill you first, then the subsequent fallout (and ten years of nuclear winter) probably will.
Better Dead than Red was a household mantra and the worlds scientific and military resources were basically held ransom to a monumental game of global poker, known as The Cold War. Indeed, the stakes were high, fuelled by paranoid delusion. Trigger happy Generals in The Pentagon, wielded atomic weapons like so many kids with water bombs. It was like a scene from Dr Strange Glove:
We gotta nuke them goddamn commies! Nuke em all!
But... no wait! That doesn’t work! It’s a no-win scenario. Like playing chess with live hand grenades.
or better still: Two sworn enemies standing in a lake of gasoline, one holds three matches.
The other holds five. (Carl Sagan)
But its the 1950's, so we can’t talk about that. Doubt in the campaign weakens the defence, right?
Meanwhile, (to make sure the public was sufficiently traumatised further), The McCarthy Witch Hunts were in full swing, holding endless congressional hearings to weed out communist sympathisers.
Have you ever been a member of, or in any way associated with (either directly or indirectly) the Communist Party?
Hollywood was in a state of siege, black-listing actors, filmmakers, writers and musicians who just happen to like the idea of a better world.
What? I hear you say. A better world? Sounds like goddamn commie talk to me! Shoot that basterd!
And its not just Hollywood, but the entire USA is under the thumb. Trust was a hard thing to come by in these paranoid times. Fear of the other, fear of the unknown. Russian Spies were everywhere, apparently. Curtains twitched frantically, as strangers moved in next door, ready to invade our homes, in the guise of pleasant speaking Englishmen (probably) and no one was safe from the threat of those goddamnn commies! And only the Russians knew what they thought of us.
FEAR OF THE OTHER
Speaking of pleasant speaking Englishmen, the pinnacle themes of this film (mainly fear of The Other) are no more so aptly portrayed when the alien Klaatu (played by Michael Rennie) pays a visit to Mrs Crockett’s boarding house: Already in a state of anxiety (from various news bulletins of the aliens escape) Mrs Crockett’s guests leap from their seats, at the sudden appearance of the mild-mannered and well-groomed stranger, who politely asks to rent a room.
Klaatu’s charm quickly wins them over and it’s clear that his co-lodger Mrs Benson (Patricia Neal) has the hots for this weird English-speaking (not to mention) COMPLETE STRANGER. So much so, she even allows him to take her ten-year old kid off to go see the flying saucer (!)
Wow, now if that aint trust I don’t know what is. Let total strangers take your kids to see flying saucers. Not so much as a criminal records check.
All you gotta do is be white and smile, I guess.
Michael Rennie as the charm-smooch alien Klaatu
Only Mrs Bensons jealous boyfriend (played by Hugh Marlowe) is immune to Klaatu’s charms and sets out to expose him for all his worth.
And these are just some of the most poignant and dramatic scenes of the movie because it shows us everything we need to know about 1950s American social anxieties. And not only did white-collar Southern Americans fear the communists, we’re also in the midst of racial segregation too.
Jeez, imagine if Sydney Poitier had rolled up at Mrs Crockett’s boarding house?
Hey kid! Wanna go see a flyin’ saucer??
We might have entered some fucked-up Klu Klux Klan territory here. Plus it would still be another three years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus and fan the flames of race equality.
But 1950's Hollywood could only stand so much.
What ? A film that challenges the Cold War, McCarthyism, Racism and stars a black guy too?
Get outta here!
All joking aside, I would of loved to have seen that version. Sydney Poitier as Klaatu? How awsum would that have been?
In the age of Deep Fakery, somebody's gotta make that film.
But for now, we just have to settle for Michael Rennie, who’s quaint English ways were about as radical as it got, for 1950s American audiences. And lets not even go there with any homo-related or gender identity connotations. For the sake of simplicity, he’s just a straight-white-guy from outer space! Capeesh?
A MESSAGE FOR PEACE
But I digress. This was the state of play in those impossible times.
This might be an old scratchy black and white movie, with lumbering killer-robots etc but the themes of paranoia and self destruction are as relevant today, as they were back then.
We are still on the brink of nuclear war. We still fear the other. But its often films like this, that remind us, that it doesn't have to be that way.
Hey Brother, why cant we all just ...get along?
When The Day The Earth Stood Still premiered in 1951, it (surprisingly) received generally positive reviews.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association even gave it a Golden Global Award for promoting World Peace.
LEGACY
Henceforth, the characters of the Christ-like Klaatu (and his indestructible killer police robot Gort), where indelibly etched into the public psyche, spurning an entire genre of science fiction movies: some bad, some just plain terrible but nearly all dealing with the idea of the communist threat in the guise of alien invasion. In most cases, the invaders were hostile and in others, pacifists and victims of misunderstanding, such was the legacy that The Day The Earth Stood Still had left us.
Nobody can deny this films power to make one stop and think about the tightrope we precariously walk upon and without this movie, there wouldn’t be Tv serials such as Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, which essentially touched upon similar themes. With that in mind, Captain Kirk could quite easily be Klaatu: seeking out new life and civilisations etc, bringing them under the wing of a United Federation. And really that is what this film is about: the promotion of a stronger United Nations.
In plainer words, The Day The Earth Stood Still stuck a big middle finger up to McCarthyism and the Nuclear Arms race. It could be argued that this one film influenced an entire generation to work towards world peace, culminating in subsequent anti-nuke films such as, The War Game (1966), The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984), leading to the final days of the Iron Curtain and the end of The Cold War.
Director Robert Wise would go on to direct Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), spawning a franchise that is still going strong today. With the advent of the internet, we are now more informed about the complexities of our world but we still gotta long way to go towards world peace. So if anything, The Day The Earth Stood Still has ingrained itself into our subconscious, to the point that perhaps it has made an indelible impression on where our priorities really lie.
It may not seem like we live in a better world right now but it’s a far sight better than it used to be.
So just remember kids, the next time you play with Nukes, watch out for Gort. Or you’ll be playing your next game of war, with sticks and stones!
Klaatu Barada Nikto !
