Movie Review: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

This sci-fi classic was added to my To View list some months ago, when I first heard they were doing a remake. I had seen it a couple of times before, but many years ago, and had little memory of it. So last night I sat down and refreshed my memory.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is the tale of the alien visitor Klaatu, who comes to Earth with a message for humanity too important to entrust to any one man or even any one nation. Klaatu seeks an audience with the heads of state of all nations of the world at once, to deliver his message to the world at large. Sadly, given the state of the world at the time (with WWII just a few years behind it, the world was now deeply entrenched in the Cold War), this proves to be impossible. As he appears human, the alien escapes the military and disappears into society, attempting to assemble the great minds of the world to receive his message. With the help of his robot companion Gort and some humans he befriends along the way, Klaatu must evade the military long enough to deliver his message — for Earth’s fate hangs in the balance.

The thing that stands out most to me about the movie is its age. I missed some of the political references — for instance, when one skeptical character remarked, “I say he comes from right here on Earth and you know who I mean”, I really wasn’t sure (though I did have some ideas). The behavior of some of the characters seemed strange to me as well. One child in the movie spoke with a very “Leave it to Beaver” sort of naivete, and perhaps I’ve seen too much science fiction, but it seemed quite odd to me that when the alien visitor emerged from his space ship and introduced himself to the assembled soldiers surrounding the craft, no ranking military officer stepped forward to address him. Finally, many of sci-fi’s tropes and cliches appear in this movie, and I had to constantly remind myself that at the time, they were new and fresh.

So bearing in mind its age, I was able to enjoy the science fiction story of the alien among a fearful humankind, trying to communicate with people of an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile culture to achieve a mutually beneficial goal. This was an excellent film for the time, and one whose central themes stand the test of time, if its trappings do not. This is a movie with a moral, and the moral itself is timeless — though it was perhaps more prominent in the public consciousness in 1951. I won’t spoil it by giving it away, but I will say that I’m glad the movie was updated and I hope that the remake retains the essential character of the original. I’ll be seeing that one some time soon, and will review it here when I do.

Overall, I give The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) four stars out of five. Perhaps, had I seen it fifty years ago, it would have been five stars, but it loses some points on accessibility as it makes certain assumptions about the viewer’s knowledge and experience which are no longer valid.

Definitely worth seeing at least once.