Few Hollywood filmmakers have had careers as impressive as that of Robert Wise. The Oscar-winning director of "West Side Story" later went on to call the shots on "The Sound of Music", before shifting gears to marshal alien-virus thriller "The Andromeda Strain" and the USS Enterprise's big-screen debut, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". But a low-key science fiction drama from earlier in his eclectic filmography is arguably Wise's most memorable and influential work. In fact, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" still feels relevant 75 years after its release.
That's not to say this post-war drama doesn't feel dated. Shot in black-and-white and surprisingly light on visual fireworks — it wasn't until 1956's Technicolor "Forbidden Planet" that Hollywood truly embraced sci-fi's potential to wow — Wise's understated approach sometimes has the feel of a stage play. It's also hard to believe that any contemporary mom would allow her 10-year-old son to spend a day with a man she'd only just met, as Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) does with the alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) here.
Look past the 1951 setting, however, and the movie's anti-war message about humanity being on a crash course to destruction has never lost its poignancy.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" starts with a flying saucer landing in the middle of Washington, DC, prompting mass hysteria across the world. A humanoid figure steps out, offering a message of universal harmony — "We have come to visit you in peace and with good will" — but he's shot by a jittery soldier who mistakes a gift for a weapon. Klaatu's giant robot sidekick, Gort, then steps out of the vessel, obliterates a load of firearms with his laser eyes, and silently guards the ship as his master is taken to hospital.
Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright consulted on the design of the seamless flying saucer (its doors were rendered invisible by the ingenious use of putty and silver paint), while Wise hired real-life newscasters to make all the hyperbolic "man from Mars" headlines more believable.
For the role of the alien visitor, the production considered Hollywood stars Spencer Tracy, Claude Rains and Montgomery Clift, but eventually settled on little-known Brit Michael Rennie, reasoning that he'd be totally unfamiliar to American audiences. Gort, meanwhile, was played by Lock Martin, a theater usher whose 7'7" frame made him ideal to fill the vast silver suit. Unfortunately, he lacked the strength to match his towering stature, and required the assistance of wires or trolleys whenever Gort had to carry his co-stars on screen.
Thanks to the wonders of extraterrestrial medicine, Klaatu's recovery is remarkably swift. He's soon telling an aide to the US president that he's spent the last five months en route to Earth —"Let's just say we're neighbors," he says when asked about his home planet— and explains that he's arrived with a message so important that it can only be shared with every country in the world simultaneously. But this being the height of the Cold War, the aide points out that delivering on his request may be easier said than done.
The US military wanted nothing to do with the film (based on Harry Bates' 1940 short story "Farewell to the Master"), unhappy with its anti-militaristic message and portrayal of soldiers with itchy trigger fingers. Producer Julian Blaustein was also overt about his own motivations for making the movie — namely using sci-fi allegory to make the case for a "strong United Nations", an organization still in its infancy in 1951.
Klaatu is similarly motivated on screen. Having realized he won't get anywhere through official channels, he escapes from hospital and finds his way to a guest house where he meets Helen and her son, Bobby (Billy Gray). When asked who might be the greatest thinker in America, the boy immediately suggests Professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), an Albert Einstein analogue who's wooed by Klaatu's solutions to a particularly tricksy math equation. The scientist then agrees to gather some of the finest minds of the planet at the spaceship, but requests something in return: a "dramatic but not destructive" demonstration of the alien's strength.
It's Klaatu's response that gives "The Day the Earth Stood Still" its name, as he puts every machine on the planet — with the considerate exception of hospital equipment and airplanes in flight — to sleep for 30 minutes. It's a wonderfully eerie sequence, with streets full of stationary cars, stopped printing presses, and — perhaps most ominous of all — rollercoaster passengers left waiting for the drop.
The authorities, however, see Klaatu's non-violent intervention as a declaration of war, and make him the target of a city-wide manhunt. He's eventually shot again — dead this time — only to be resurrected by the multi-purpose Gort. This was, by some distance, the most controversial element of the movie's plot.
It turned out that Edward H North, a former US army officer, had covertly turned Klaatu into a Christ allegory, a "private little joke" that neither Blaustein nor Wise had spotted.
The alien spends much of the runtime going by the alias of John Carpenter (Jesus's profession, same initials), and is ultimately betrayed by someone close to him, Helen's sleazy boyfriend Tom (Hugh Marlowe), fulfilling Judas's role in the story. But it was the alien visitor's return from the dead that attracted the ire of the American censors, who insisted on the addition of a line to clarify Gort's abilities. "The real power over life and death belongs to a higher divine spirit," Klaatu explains, pointing out that his return to health is merely temporary.
He does at least survive long enough to deliver a warning to humanity from the wider galactic community: "Pursue your present course and face obliteration". With ongoing wars, global warming, and various other threats to humanity dominating the news, it's a message that could have been written yesterday.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" was only a moderate success at the box office, but its legacy and influence have lasted much longer — more than enough to earn the film a place in the US Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1995.
The score (by Bernard Herrmann, who'd worked on "Citizen Kane" and went on to compose multiple scores for Alfred Hitchcock) was groundbreaking in its eerie use of the theremin, while elements of Gort's design can be seen in everything from "Battlestar Galactica"'s Cylons to Marvel's Destroyer. Klaatu's famous instruction, "Klaatu barada nikto", is up there with "May the Force be with you" and "Live long and prosper" among the most famous sci-fi phrases of all time. George Lucas even referenced all three words in the names of aliens in "Return of the Jedi".
The movie got a less acclaimed remake in 2008, with Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, and an environmental message to replace the original anti-war theme. But perhaps "The Day the Earth Stood Still"'s strangest claim to fame is its apparent influence on US foreign policy.
In 1985, then-US President Ronald Reagan asked his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev if an extraterrestrial invasion might help them overcome national differences and work together. National security advisor Colin Powell was reportedly convinced that the suggestion had been inspired by Wise's film — and nobody's saying that about "The Sound of Music".
