By JB
Since I'm in Chicago this week for a conference of people who sort of but not really do what I do, feeling a bit like a stranger in a strange land, I thought I'd bring your attention to the original 1951 version of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I'm afaid that this classic is in danger of being painted by the broad brush of mediocrity alongside the reputedly tepid remake, which I'm not going to discuss because I haven't seen it.
See this film. It's good. It's interesting. Don't hold the special effects against it. They're not terrible, but they're a product of their time. More interesting and more worthwhile is the fact that the film's allegories are kind of in conflict with each other. Yes, Mr. Carpenter, initials JC, has come down from the sky, dies to save mankind, and subsequently rises from the dead, sitteth at the right hand of Gort the Robot Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead ... etc. There is that.
And there's also the nuclear proliferation thing, which is at once very obvious and very complicated. We're being threatened by the aliens because we're developing rockets and nuclear technology that could potentially threaten them. Is this a warning against war technology and an appeal to join hands and love one another (works a lot better in Independence Day, when we have a common enemy to annihilate)? Or is it a justification for the dismantling of formerly threatening states and a western imperial agenda of peace and stability through the threat of total destruction?
Well, it's both. With the Jesus stuff thrown in. And that's what makes it so interesting.
We could talk also about the kickass Bernard Hermann score, the brilliant use of shadow, the mise en scene, but ultimately it's the clash of themes that makes the film provocative. That, and Aunt Bea is in it.