Reeling Backward: "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951)

Honestly, I found it a little slow. And heavy-handed.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" has lived far too long on my list of iconic classic films that I've never seen. The fact that I had watched the awful 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves but not the original weighed on my conscious as someone who purports to be a serious critic.

I can see why many people regard it as one of the most seminal science fiction movies ever made. The special effects, for 1951, were quite extravagant, with the spaceship descending upon the National Mall in Washington D.C. like an angelic discus. Gort, the 8-foot-tall metal(ish) robot who acts as the alien ambassador's personal bodyguard as well as the turn-the-Earth-into-a-cinder failsafe for his mission, is scary enough and imposing.

(Even if his legs do crinkle at the back of the knee like trousers when he walks.)

With a ton of extras, military hardware, scenes of chaos from around the globe, armies of vehicles being moved around, an A-list director in Robert Wise and a musical score by the great Bernard Herrmann, it had the scope of a big-budget spectacle in what is really a B-movie at heart.

Sometimes just being first gets you forever tagged as the best, too. Indeed, "Day" established many of the tropes of science fiction, from Herrmann's use of a theremin to suggest something alien and eerie, to the saucer-like shape of spacecraft. You also have robot sidekicks who frequently pose a threat to humans.

But perhaps its most lasting legacy is as a piece of cautionary propaganda. You may already know the basics of the story: alien ambassador Klaatu (Michael Rennie) comes to Earth to deliver a message of peace, and a warning. But he's shot and wounded by a jittery soldier, and after escaping from the hospital becomes a fugitive from justice.

After slumming around at a boarding house and getting to know some humans, Klaatu warns that the grand federation of peaceful planets are disturbed by humans' development of atomic weapons and missiles, which they see as a threat to their tranquility. Unless mankind chooses to put aside its squabbles and embrace non-violence, they will have no choice but to turn the planet into a smoking ruin.

Most subsequent films and TV shows about humans encountering a more scientifically advanced alien race involve some aspects of this rather paternalistic disposition: "Behave, or you'll be spanked." You can also see it flipped around in the Prime Directive of the Star Trek universe, which essentially treats more primitive cultures as children to be watched over with benevolent neglect.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the philosophy embodied by Klaatu, since it's pretty clear that director Wise and screenwriter Edmund H. North (based on a short story by Harry Bates) enthusiastically agree with the sentiments espoused.

For starters, it's totalitarianism. "Conform to our expectations of behavior or we'll end you" is hardly an example of the exercise of free will. People who are peaceable only because they'll be killed if they aren't haven't really embraced non-violence as a way of life. Rather, the explicit threat of violence against them is what prevents them from expressing their passions, even if it is in negative and destructive ways.

In my experience, people who are forced to bottle up their emotions in one way usually find an awful way to express them in another venue.

I also feel compelled to point out that Klaatu and Gort are rather slippery on the internal logic of their own dictums. Klaatu describes Gort, who fires an energy beam out of his visor that can vaporize anything, as part of an intergalactic police force that enacts the will of the peace-loving planets. He states that this enforcement exists outside of their control, and that once it has begun, they do not have the power to stop it.

Except, of course, that's exactly what happens, when Klaatu instructs a sympathetic human woman (Patricia Neal) to utter the phrase "Klaatu barada nikto" to Gort after he has been killed. Apparently it's a failsafe command that instructs the robot to halt his attacks upon humans and retrieve Klaatu's corpse so it can be revived.

In a late change to the script at the behest of Hollywood censors, Klaatu reveals that his resurrection is to be short-lived, since the ultimate power over life and death is reserved for "the Almighty Spirit." This underlines the suggestion of Klaatu as a Jesus-like figure -- he arises from the dead, but then departs for the heavens. While hiding out he goes by the name of "Carpenter," after the name on the suit he stole, which was the vocation of Christ.

Sam Jaffe has a small but effective role as Professor Jacob Barnhardt, the world's leading scientist who is recruited by Klaatu to present his message to like-minded individuals, since he can't convince the President of the United States or other world leaders to meet with him. (It's never made exactly clear why POTUS won't do this; we're simply told it's "impossible.")

The beginning and end of the film are terrific sci-fi, though the middle section drags badly, with Rennie wandering around with his congenial smile, pulling an "My Alien Father Knows Best" act.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is one of those Great Movies that assumed its mantle of greatness without ever escaping the fact that it's merely good. The film hasn't aged well, but then again not many of us do.

Reeling Backward: "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949)

"Twelve O'clock High" is a terrific war movie, one more concerned with the toll combat takes on men than any fleeting glory it might bring. But the title is spectacularly misleading.

Given a moniker like that, I think most people would believe it was a movie full of dogfights and aerial combat. There is in fact one fairly long fight sequence -- made up largely of actual combat footage from World War II taken by both American and German personnel. But this 1949 film is more about what happens on the ground in between combat missions.

What strikes me most about this film directed by Henry King -- who had a long career spanning the silent era through the Golden Age, from 1915 to 1962 -- is that it's not structured anything like other war pictures of that era, or most Hollywood films in general.

The main character, played by Gregory Peck, doesn't show up until nearly a half-hour in. The supporting characters aren't just there to make the star look good, but fit organically into a group dynamic. The hero doesn't die gloriously in the end, but suffers a nervous breakdown and is unable to take part in the most important mission of the war.

Indeed, the framing device of one the U.S. Eighth Air Force Group 918 members returning to their old, abandoned airfield at Archbury features not the guts-and-glory commander, but his mild-mannered adjutant (a job title that's essentially military-ese for secretary). He finds the old Robin Hood toby jug that had been used at the group headquarters -- turned outward on the officer's club mantle to indicate a mission the next morning -- for sale in a thrift store, buys it and returns to the grown-over field to reminisce.

Even the poster for the film is misleading. It shows Peck toking on a cigarette wearing flying goggles, with the faces of the other cast mostly obscured as they're arrayed behind him. It even features Peck with a nurse at the bottom, implying some sort of romance. In actuality, this is the only woman who appears in the movie, and it's for about two lines of dialogue.

The set-up is the 918th is part if the early air war against Germany in late 1942, and have been stuck with the label of the cursed group that always seems to suffer the highest casualties. The commander, Col. Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill), is beloved by the men and they by him -- too much so, in fact. Davenport is accused of "over-identifying" with his men, too concerned over losing them than accomplishing their critical missions.

They even have to endure the taunts of "Colonel Haw-Haw," a German radio broadcaster very much in the tradition of Tokyo Rose, who seems to know how many planes the 918th lost during that day's mission, and even the names of the planes and their captains. Things have recently grown much worse with the advent of low-altitude daylight missions -- "precision bombing" is what the brass (inaccurately) calls it.

Davenport is relieved of his command in favor of Brigadier Gen. Frank Savage (Peck), who's determined to be a by-the-book man who lights a fire under his pilots and crews. He gives them a rousing greeting speech -- so rousing, in fact, that every single pilot in the group asks to be transferred out.

"Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea, it won't be so tough," Savage thunders. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

The movie spends quite a lot of time contrasting the different leadership styles of Savage and Davenport, with plenty of faults to be found in each. Savage's harsh methods eventually pull the 918th out of its nosedive, but not before nearly ending in disaster when an inspector general is dispatched to find out why all those transfer requests have been held up.

And Savage bends his iron ways somewhat to accommodate the needs of the men. In fact, by the end he's the one arguing to the boss, Major General Pritchard (Millard Mitchell), that his crews are not just faceless numbers but human beings -- a virtual copy of Davenport's earlier perspective.

"Twelve O'clock High" is based on the novel by Berine Lay Jr. and Sy Bartlett, who also wrote the screenplay (with some alterations by King). Real events and people highly influenced both the book and the movie (not to mention a short-lived 1960s television series).

Most notably is the character of Jesse Bishop (Robert Patten), who received the Medal of Honor for heroic actions, which is where the movie begins. A B-17 crash-lands into the Archbury field -- Hollywood stuntman Paul Mantz piloted the plane by himself to achieve this amazing shot -- after a harrowing ordeal. The captain's head had been split open by an enemy shell, causing him to go into a crazed state and try to wrest the controls away from Bishop, his co-pilot. Bishop flew another two hours, flying the plane with one hand while fighting off his deranged commander with the other, and completing the bombing run.

This is an almost exact account of Lt. John C. Morgan, who really did win the Medal of Honor under these circumstances. Bishop is later killed on a subsequent mission -- one of the events that help send Savage over the edge -- but in reality Morgan survived the war, though he was shot down and was interred at a P.O.W. camp.

In the movie, Bishop is the only man on the base who Savage intitially respects, and uses him as his liaison to reach out to the other pilots, convincing them to drop their mass transfer request. Over time, though, Savage grows closer to some other offers, notably Maj. Joe Cobb (John Kellogg) and Maj. Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger), the aforementioned adjutant.

Stovall is an interesting odd duck. He's an older bald man, a "retread" from the first World War who gave up a successful law practice to reenlist, but was told he was too old for anything but desk jockeying. Stovall loved Davenport perhaps more than any other man in the group, but his first loyalty is to the 918th, so he becomes Savage's first conscript in the battle to gain the men's trust.

It's a terrific, understated performance, and Jagger deservedly won an Oscar for it.

The other major character is Lt. Col. Ben Gately (Hugh Marlowe), the number two man under Davenport. The son and grandson of war heroes, Gately is labeled a coward and malingerer by Savage, who demotes him from Air Exec to crew captain. He orders Gately to paint his plane with the name "Leper Colony," and has every sulker and misfit in the outfit assigned to him. Gately shows his true stripes in the end, though, hiding a cracked spine through three successful missions.

It's a rather unique role for Peck, in that there's not a trace of cuddliness or Atticus Finch-esque nobility to Frank Savage. He's a man with a job that needs to get done, and everything in his existence is subservient to that goal. We never find out a single thing about Savage other than his military duties -- does he have a wife? children? -- as he exemplifies sacrifice and self-reliance.

Like "Battleground" and other WWII pictures I've been privileged to discover, "Twelve O'Clock High" is a war movie with more soul and depth than I'd have ever guessed capable of Hollywood of that era.

3.5 stars out of four