The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

At the start of the 1950s, there were very few science-fiction films which dealt with the perceived threat to Earth from other planets and alien species. There were a few right at the birth of cinema, such as Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902) and R.W. Paul's The '?' Motorist, and over the next few decades a few isolated films such as Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon (1929) appeared, but the subject wasn't particularly popular with the public until cinema was into its sixth decade. Part of the reason was that special effects weren't up to much, and usually if the effects simply weren't a distraction it was considered a success, even at the time it was too easy to accidentally create laughter rather than fear due to the limitations of effects. Also, with two devastating  world wars in the meantime, people had enough to be worrying about with Nazis and fascism, without adding aliens to the list.
But in the 50s there was a huge boom in these science-fiction films. Throughout the decade there would be countless films which took the basic premise of aliens on distant planets and ran with it. Some would be big-budget classics of the genre such as The War of the Worlds (1952) and Forbidden Planet (1956), but there also appeared a number of decidedly low-budget science fiction films - known as b-movies - catering to the large public appetite. The film that can be credited with beginning this craze in science-fiction is the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The film is set in Washington D.C. and begins when a U.F.O. lands on a baseball field, causing the military to be immediately mobilised, and the craft is soon surrounded by soldiers, tanks and heavy weapons, not to mention hundreds of members of the public who've come to satisfy their curiosity. A humanoid alien then emerges but is wounded as he approaches the men and an over-zealous solider shoots him. Then Gort, a larger, far more menacing figure comes out of the spaceship and destroys the soldiers' weapons by staring at them. Taken under the care of human doctors the humanoid alien is able to recover from his wounds, and announces himself as Klaatu (Michael Rennie). His demand to meet with all the nation's leaders is dismissed, and he escapes from the hospital to find someone more amenable to talk to. Keeping his true identity secret he rents a local room, meeting Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her young son Bobby (Billy Gray), whom he develops a friendship with, learning much about the planet's history and customs from the boy.  Realising the only person who can understand his reason for coming to Earth may be the world's leading scientist, Klaatu meets with Professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe in a blatant nod to Albert Einstein) and reveals that the inhabitants of other planets are wary of the humans because they've now, with the dawn of the nuclear age, developed the ability to cause destruction on other planets, not just their own, and may eventually pose a threat to Klaatu's own world.  With the police now hunting Klaatu, Helen assists him and Klaatu tells her that if anything should happen to him, she is to recite the words "Klaatu barada nikto" to Gort. When Klaatu is then spotted and shot by two soldiers, Gort is reawakened...

The first thing that's noticeable about The Day the Earth Stood Still is how quickly it moves along. The term 'brisk' isn't one that can usually be levelled at films from the early 50s, but here director Robert Wise wastes no time in setting things up, and the whole film then zips along for the rest of its 93-minute duration. He doesn't include any tertiary plots or characters, and everyone that's in the film is here for a reason - to tell the story and nothing more, nothing less.  There's nothing showy here, but to do so would be to detract from the story itself. Though Wise had been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Editing on Citizen Kane in 1941, and directed his first feature in 1944, it's really on The Day the Earth Stood Still that he comes into his own. He would go on to receive further Academy recognition with his musicals West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965), before falling from favour somewhat in the 70s.

The script is similarly tight, and it never moves away from the main plot. It's obvious throughout why Klaatu has come to Earth - he's there to warn humans about the risks they're bringing upon themselves by continuing to develop nuclear weapons. A neat modern-day crossover is to consider Iran, developing nuclear energy for the best part of a decade, being warned by numerous countries; the UK, US, Israel, that if they continue to go down the route of enriching uranium, it will end in conflict. Though in The Day the Earth Stood Still Klaatu eschews some of the more flowery language of today's ultimatums ("Planet Earth will be eliminated"), it nicely demonstrates that the universal theme is still relevant over 60 years later.

With a small cast, fortunately all of the acting is top notch  - for the lead role of Klaatu it was never going to be easy to portray an alien, but Michael Rennie is very effective. He is calm, collected and politely insistent at all times, and never comes near losing control, even when he's gunned down. This serves only to make the character more chilling. The mute robot Gort must be the most recognisable android of the cinema since the robot Maria in Metropolis (1927) and is certainly the iconic image from this film; though his screen time is comparatively little, it only serves to make the scenes in which he appears more memorable. The music is also particularly distinctive. It was scored by Bernard Herrmann, who became synonymous with Alfred Hitchcock after numerous collaborations with the director including North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960), but his work on The Day the Earth Stood Still is some of his most experimental. His use of the theremin instrument, which had been used sparingly in films since 1931, and memorably in Spellbound (1945) and The Lost Weekend (1945) , gives the film an eerie, otherworldly feel. Compare the moment when Klaatu first emerges from the ship; there is no music, and the mood is curious rather than menacing. Then, moments later when Gort steps out, the theramin music bursts out and it suddenly sounds like the end of the world. In that scene the music is everything.

If The Day the Earth Stood Still hadn't been such a success, it's unlikely there would have been the mass of science-fiction films that followed it. But because it had been made so well it would take a lot of effort to make a film that actually surpassed it, as well as being responsible for inspiring countless clones, not to mention the awful 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves as Klaatu.

After the popularity of such films throughout the 1950s, and with the atomic threat of the Cold War receding, there were almost no alien science-fiction films in the 60s, and the few quality ones that surfaced in the 70s were more concerned with environmental issues than alien invasion (Silent Running, The Planet of the Apes). Not until the mid 1990s would the genre have a brief resurgence, with big-budget films such as Independence Day (1996), Men in Black (1997) and Starship Troopers (1997), before fading again from the big screen. As long as the film studios continue to produce half-hearted remakes, this is unlikely to change, leaving great films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still as markers of a more innovative period in science fiction cinema.