How Meaningful Can One Movie Get To Be?

 

An Earth Stood Still Since '51, Then '62

Step forward please if The Day the Earth Stood Still resonates in your filmgoing life. “Going” for most was distance from chair to television, or consult with remote, as fewer each day know The Day the Earth Stood Still from theatrical experience. If they did, it would make them eighty or pushing that. Having known many who discovered Earth first upon its network premiere (March 3, 1962, on NBC), I’ve come to appreciate how meaningful that evening was for a generation now seventy years young or approaching it. These are folks who would not give one Day the Earth Stood Still for ten Star Wars, or any other sci-fi touched down since 1951. It is then, like all the rest, a generational thing, as in my childhood treasure is better than yours. I can be marginally more objective for yes, having seen The Day the Earth Stood Still on TV at age ten, but not having had life altered by it, being fonder of The Thing also seen first around a same time.

I wanted perspective broader than my own and so asked a collector friend of many decades what it was like seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still when it was new. Skip was at Day first runs, present for others of the burgeoning 50’s sci-fi cycle. He liked Day, but not so much as previously seen Rocketship XM, which boasted space travel Stood Still, with its “slow parts” and “no action,” lacked. Then there was Destination Moon, “boring,” Skip recalls, but for color, Man from Planet X registering as faintly, The Thing his favorite of the lot. So how did The Day the Earth Stood Still become fandom’s preferred of shared hindsight? Was it seeing Earth first and forever more on television, then of course, home video and now streaming? (lately on Amazon and Vudu in 4K). The Day the Earth Stood Still is a story with ideas, a thought provoker best contemplated in quiet setting, and more ideally, solitude. Earth was peacenik sci-fi cued to the sixties more than fifties from whence it came. A certain quiet pervades and that I suspect was what gave this one home-view status well above fly-saucers and bug-eye aliens tendered elsewhere.

I found out how The Day the Earth Stood Still rated when my father came across a Channel 8 broadcast in 1965 and saw values he had not associated before with a thought-low genre. “If science-fiction is like this, I don’t mind your sitting up late to watch it.” Would this relax till-then parental stance toward my midnight habit? Testing what seemed new policy within the week, I announced intent to watch Channel 3’s “science-fiction” offer for Friday late night. What was the picture, they asked? THE GIANT GILA MONSTER, I chirpily replied, to which response was mute resignation, whatever good will came of The Day the Earth Stood Still mere puff of transient smoke. It seemed there was growing up to do before I would properly appreciate The Day the Earth Stood Still. Its message was plain, but was more Klaatu, less Gort, the deficit for child that was me? As with all 50’s sci-fi where robots figured, posters would foreground them. Gort was the principal for purpose of selling, a seeming contradiction to serious message The Day the Earth Stood Still tried to impart. The robot stands resolutely still for virtually all of run time, and it is Michael Rennie he picks up and carries, not Patricia Neal, her hair dark, not blonde (the half-sheet), her clothing intact always and never low-cut (the three-sheet). Had Earth’s promotion gone amok done product more harm than good?

Children were said to go about schoolyards reciting Klaatu, Barada, Nikto. Not where I attended. Perhaps in 1951 or immediate post 3/3/62. Seems love was either not had for The Day the Earth Stood Still or was intense. Few met it halfway. I knew a 16mm collector of many years whose first feature purchase was The Day the Earth Stood Still, $250 in hard-earned mid-seventies money. This was when Cinefantastique devoted much of Volume 4, Issue 4, to deep explore of The Day the Earth Stood Still, pioneering instance of one film historicized with no rock left unturned. Author Steve Rubin (since noted for his series of James Bond Encyclopedias) was able to track down and interview most all of Earth’s creative team, with remarkable result no one could achieve today, seventieth year having passed since The Day the Earth Stood Still was released and participants gone (apart from Billy Gray … is he all that remains?). Cinefantastique’s epic article is measure of what The Day the Earth Stood Still meant/means to constituents. Greater love hath fans for few else I can think of.

The Cinefantastique article in 1976 pre-dated Star Wars. Honors list of science-fiction was a shorter one: The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of theWorlds, Destination Moon, Forbidden Planet. 16mm projected prints of these were highlight of sci-fi gatherings where fans could see them on a hotel ballroom screen as opposed to shrunk TV. People who possessed such rarity stayed close to projectors unspooling their trove. Never mind how dupey or damaged 16mm was. They would do because they had to do, quite the contrast to what now can be viewed at home, not only The Day the Earth Stood Still in 4K, but War of the Worlds on souped-up UHD (as in Ultra-High-Definition). Yes, wires supporting saucers reveal themselves again in the latter, and 4K handed me a Stood Still surprise not noted before, enhanced clarity pulling back curtain on Times Square immobilized by Klaatu not in 1951, but 1938, theatre marquees advertising Love Finds Andy Hardy, with Marie Antoinette playing across the street. Was Klaatu able to accomplish time travel in addition to his other gifts?

Very much alongside The Day the Earth Stood Still in fan estimation is Invaders from Mars, except it’s been for intent and purpose lost since new (1953). Independently produced, this was invasion but briefly conducted upon theatres, then gone but for odd bookings (our Liberty had a 1965 encore, a single “Late Show” one Saturday night), then black-and-white broadcasts to chill Cinecolor’s unique affect. A DVD to much later follow was but faint reflection of what Invaders from Mars once looked like. Closest I came to true encounter was Moon Mullins giving me a 35mm trailer with Cinecolor’s signature bright blue soundtrack. This was 1973, and I figured to never see the picture proper beyond this two-minute souvenir. Now comes restoration of found elements on Blu-Ray/4K for September release. Scott MacQueen of Doctor X and Wax Museum fame is involved, an assurance of quality result. What does Invaders from Mars mean to others of my generation? Everything it would seem, perhaps more even than The Day the Earth Stood Still, as all is told from a child’s viewpoint, Jimmy Hunt sole witness to alien touchdown and no one believing him, including parents claimed by body snatcher Martians. Lots saw Invaders from Mars on television and were traumatized by it, despite half portion that B/W amounted to. We’ll not recapture such first impressions however pristine discs end up. Going just part-way on a sentimental journey is yet value few would dispute, so expect this edition to sell brisk among the faithful, Invaders from Mars a perhaps last of sci-fi trophies to be reclaimed, if not acme of the entire lot.