movie: The Day The Earth Stood Still

I walked to the Heights theater this evening to see the original 1951 release of the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still".  I was glad to see around 200 people at the old theater.  They even had someone there playing the Wurlitzer organ for the pre-show entertainment.  The reel that was supposed to be delivered to the theater was destroyed a few weeks earlier by the previous theater to show it.  Luckily, the Fox distributor (don't expect me to praise very often anything with the Fox name in it) searched around the country and found somebody with another copy.  It had the usual minor scratches and blips that the old films acquire.

The movie is better than the remake I saw in 2008.  The new movie had a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality.  The original, though, was more philosophical.  It proposed that destruction was the final recourse, not the first plan.  It left humanity's fate up to humanity, if we could be bothered to listen at all.

The audience laughed at a few scenes.  The first wasn't intended to be humorous, but in hindsight it really is hilarious.  Early in the story, a doctor is commenting to someone that Klaatu is already in his 70s but looks only 35 years old.  Wondering why that is, he supposed that their medicine is just that much more advanced than our own.  Immediately afterward, he pulls out his cigarettes.  Cue audience laughter.

The second instance was intended as a funny counterpoint.  One man at a breakfast table is commenting about the disappearance of Klaatu under military guard and wondering why the incompetent government hadn't found him yet.  One man suggests patience because the government is made up of people "just like us".  "People!", the other guy scoffs.  "No, they're Democrats."  Still funny 60 years later, that the fear mongers so actively dislike anyone who fails to keep the proper martial order.  This movie is very explicit at condemning what Klaatu calls "stupidity", which is the replacement of rationality with fear.

This version is much more philosophical than the remake.  I like it.