Le Jour où la Terre s'arrêta...

When I first saw this movie (on television circa 1957)I was just a young child four years of age. I remember sitting on my father's lap and watched the whole thing through my fingers as I held my hands over my eyes for protection (yeah...right!). Gort and Klaatu were magnificent space travelers...and with a message of peace during a time that the Soviets and U.S. were deep into the 'cold war'. Very timely! Very scary! It spooked me then and I still get a chill watching the movie today. But, it's one of the classics that will live on forever! It's message is as meaningful today as it was back in the 50's. Maybe we should all watch it again and take notes.........

A UFO lands on the Washington Mall which is quickly surrounded by the military. Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerges and tries to make contact. A nervous soldier accidentally shoots him. His robot Gort comes out to defend him. He's brought to Walter Reed hospital and he asks to meet all of the world's representatives. International squabbling makes a meeting impossible. Klaatu escapes the hospital and goes to a boarding room where widow Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby are staying. While Helen has the day with Tom Stephens, Klaatu babysits Bobby and learns about the world. Bobby leads Klaatu to Helen's boss Professor Jacob Barnhardt. It is an iconic 50s sci-fi. The story is timeless although it doesn't have many exciting thrills. The 50s style directions are a little stiff. The staging is somewhat static but it is still quite compelling. This is more of a message movie and Gort is one of the great robots of all time.

It's not unfair initially to dismiss "The Day the Earth Stood Still" as sci-fi pulp from an era full of it, but the film's anti-war message given the Cold War context it was released in makes it nothing short of a classic. Its commercial exterior featuring posters with Gort the space robot pales in comparison to the social/diplomatic values it preaches at its core. Sure, it's not all that suspenseful or riveting for science-fiction, but it represents one of the first pop culture films to reflect important moral values.

Borrowing from the lucrative UFO alien movies before it, TDTESS begins with a flying saucer landing in the Washington mall and producing an alien with a human appearance named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and his robot protector Gort, a goofy-looking man in a shiny suit with the ability to disintegrate anything with a beam from his eye. For starters, Klaatu is greeted by military bullets that destroy a gift he intended for the president that would give us the ability to study life on other planets. That's the example of the strict satirical tone taken by writer Edmund H. North (based on the short story by Harry Bates).

Despite humorous special effects and the cheesy running and screaming you see in pulp alien invasion movies, TDTESS manages to expose many of our flaws including our fear of the unknown and our propensity to resort to violence. It warns of the dangers of nuclear energy and outwardly scorns war. In the beginning years of the Cold War, such a message getting out to the public is an accomplishment that must be lauded.

TDTESS isn't only good for its messages, though it certainly is what makes the film stand out. Rennie is a terrific Klaatu. He's intriguing, friendly but also very frank, winning our sympathies but still convincing us of his other-worldly nature. The relationship he develops with the young Bobby Benson (Billy Gray) is the film's most interesting subplot next to Klaatu helping a scientist out with an equation that will lead to interplanetary travel.

Rarely does a film become a classic solely because of its message, but TDTESS certainly does. It's so frank, but speaks such an undeniable truth that in the form of cheaply made science- fiction, resonates in a way that straighter films can't. That's the beauty of the genre and why TDTESS is its first classic. ~Steven C

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Up-front: anyone who low-rated this does not understand what science fiction is about, at all. To those who judged this harshly: You can go back to watching Transformers; you're in the wrong theater. Such people should be tied to the back side of a Bantha with tummy problems. ;D

Okay, on to the serious review: Who doesn't recognize the term "Gort, Klaatu barada nicto"? This film set the bar for so many films to come, in an age when monsters were a guy in a gorilla suit and a space helmet, giant ants were terrorizing a city, and another guy in a rubber suit was stomping on a miniature Tokyo. Among that, we suddenly find a movie with actual meaning, a moral, a great plot and story-line, decent acting, an honest-to-goodness valid warning-- and one of the best robot presentations EVER.

Was it perfect? No. I don't know as I've ever seen a perfect film. Were there flaws? Sure. What do people expect? It's the overall cinematic presentation that is the thing here-- the experience of a movie capturing the audience and making them say, "Wow". Relatively few films have accomplished that over the decades. This film did.

The special effects for that day were superb. The modern-day remake didn't come close to the quality of this 1951 film. The story has stood the test of time and is even more applicable today that it was back then (only now we can add the destruction of our own world to the mix).

This movie is as close to pristine as a movie can get (for that day) , and proudly takes its place among non-sci-fi classics-- and even sci fi classics that came later. Had the HUGO awards existed in '51 I have no doubt this film would have taken top slot.

A spacecraft makes its way towards the earth, it's like a saucer with a rounded, curving girth, when it lands, a man descends, he comes in peace, wants to make friends, and then he's shot, because of difference, we're averse. A robot then appears and shows its power, disintegrating weapons, with its glower, but the alien assailed, gets the giant to curtail, though the sentiment is clear for all to see. It's not too long before the foreigner has gone, assimilating to a world gone wrong, finding out about mankind, finding out how we're so blind, to trajectories that lead to our extinction.

I don't think the message is any different all these years later, just more pertinent.