The Day the Earth Stood Still is what has become a rarity out of America--an intelligent
sci fi movie. (Another one is
Gattaca.)
This statement will be contested by the many admirers of Star Wars (and I know that Wise directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and other more recent movies, who will claim old black and white cannot possibly speak to the modern movie audience. And to this, I might not disagree.
Jaded by the ever-sophisticating technology of computer graphics, the North American audience, at least, has been weaned on the implicit notion that action, and flash of imagery is the real substance of drama.
Michael Rennie as a thoughtful visitor from somewhere else, not quite a police officer, brings a serious message that has yet to be heeded by the most powerful nation on earth--in fact, about to be disregarded by the imminent adoption of the NMD.
It is in the quiet ensemble acting--the trusting boy (Billy Gray as Bobby Benson), the woman growing to trust (Patricia Neal as Helen Benson), and even the scientist (the ever slightly strange Sam Jaffee)--that the real drama is played out; all pivoting around Klaatu.
This is the true reality of acting that the British have not yet forgotten--as evidenced by the many re-makes of their movies and television programs for the American sensibility. Even The X-Files, before the movie, before the conspiracy got out of hand and became foreground, knew:
The more explicit the image, the less room for thought, and imagination.
The Day the Earth Stood Still asks very real questions about the existence and use of atomic weapons at the beginning of the atomic age. It gets our attention with only a bit of cinematic trickery--what most in today's audience would consider weak movie-making. All that Klaatu did was follow the scientist's request: do something spectacular, but hurt no one; a very interesting challenge as Klaatu himself put it. (And not something that is cinematically spectacular, that art not technologically advanced, but the acting, the writing, the imagining was.)
In a way the director, Robert Wise, has anticipated my remarks: when Klaatu goes to the saucer landing site with Bobby, he is interviewed by the TV reporter there; but when he starts talking reasonably, intelligently about the effects of fear, and how it gets in the way, the reporter moves on.
We are people. We relate to other people. the most effective actors are people. The expressions on the faces of the actors in the early X-Files are the only way to convey the feeling of horrors only dimly glimpsed.
Why would we want these images plainly put?
What would move us to imagine, if all is before us? What poverty is this?
What would make the earth stand still for us?