Hollywood Gamechangers with Steven C. Smith: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Award-winning author and documentarian Steven C. Smith takes us inside the battles and breakthroughs behind three screen classics. All of them defied the rules…advanced the art of filmmaking…and remain among the most entertaining movies ever made.

Smith is an award-winning biographer and four-time Emmy-nominated documentary producer whose collaborators include Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Julie Andrews, and Sidney Poitier. He is the author of Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood's Most Influential Composer and A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951. Director: Robert Wise. Genre: Science Fiction)

By 1951, the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union had heated up into a nuclear arms race. A proxy war between the countries was being fought in North Korea. And the Hollywood blacklist was gaining steam, as Senators declared the film industry a hotbed of communism.

But one studio head, Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, boldly defied the warmongering of the time and greenlit a drama that was game-changing on two fronts. The Day the Earth Stood Still was among the first big-budget science fiction films made by a Hollywood studio for an adult audience. And it was the first to use science fiction as social-political parable. Set in Washington, D.C., it adopts a realistic tone to show what happens when a peaceful alien (Michael Rennie) lands in D.C. to give Earth’s leaders a warning: stop war, or the planet from which he comes will eliminate Earth to stop its hostility from spreading.

The Day the Earth Stood Still blends political allegory with intelligent, exciting storytelling. It even has a subtle, bold element of religious subtext: the alien Klaatu must pose as a human, adopting the persona of “Mr. Carpenter”—a Christlike figure who dies and is brought back to life to deliver his message of peace. And besides the iconic image of Klaatu’s assistant, the towering Gort, the movie boasts a legendary score for theremins and other electronic instruments by Bernard Herrmann.

Видео Hollywood Gamechangers with Steven C. Smith: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) канала Rancho Mirage Library & Observatory