The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

The Day the Earth Stood Still opens with an unidentified aircraft flying at supersonic speed around the world.  It finally lands on a baseball field in Washington DC.  The military is soon on hand and circles the flying saucer and awaits developments.  After a couple of hours, Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerges and declares that he comes in peace.  As he tries to deliver a gift, a soldier panics and shoots him.  Gort (Lock Martin), a mute robot, emerged and commenced to disintegrate weapons - rifles, tanks, artillery (why are artillery pieces here?) - but not the soldiers.  Klaatu calls the robot off and the military transports Klaatu to Walter Reed Hospital.

 

Klaatu has come to Earth to warn against aggression.  He declares that the galaxy has been indifferent to Earth's internal squabbles but that the advent of atomic weapons has the galaxy troubled.  Earth needs to embrace the peace-loving ways of Klaatu's people or risk extermination.  That was a rather peculiar formulation.  Be peaceful like us or we will commit genocide to protect ourselves from your violent ways.  Huh?  Amazingly, despite the obvious superiority of Klaatu's technology, the government decides to keep him locked in a hospital room while denying him the opportunity to deliver the riot act to Earth.

 

Klaatu escapes and decides he needs to learn more about humans.  Under the assumed name of Mr. Carpenter, he rents a room where he meets Helen (Patricia Neal) and her son, Bobby (Billy Gray).  One of the funniest scenes in the movie was when Tom (Hugh Marlowe), Helen's boyfriend, eagerly accepts Mr. Carpenter's offer to babysit.  Klaatu's day out with Bobby is done amazingly well.  The visits to the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery show great affect on Klaatu; maybe humans aren't so bad.

 

There are a couple of oddities that are hard to accept.  The willingness to kill an alien from a vastly superior civilization is truly short-sighted.  Imprisoning or killing an ambassador is typically viewed as an act of war.  This was particularly reckless after the power of Gort was demonstrated.  Then there is the strangeness that Klaatu's people are worried about Earthly nukes.  At this time, we hadn't even gotten a satellite into orbit but they seem to think an atomic bomb might find its way to another solar system in the near future?  Talk about an abundance of caution.

 

A very enjoyable movie that stands up surprisingly well even 67 years later.  Thumbs up.