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Robert Wise looks at the atomic age and wonders, "What would Jesus do?" Washington, D.C. is all aflutter as a phosphorescent UFO lands on National Mall grass, Klaatu the silver-swathed messiah (Michael Rennie) steps out to greet the masses and gets winged by a jumpy infantryman, Gort the robot bodyguard commences vaporizing. Recovering in the hospital, the interplanetary consul states his message: Be peaceful or be destroyed. In the midst of the Cold War, "the present international situation" prevents the requested global summit. ("I traveled 250 million miles," to which the President's aide responds with a proto-Dr. Strangelove whimper: "I appreciate that, but...") Hitchcock's The Lodger informs the visitor's introduction to suburbia, at the boarding house humanity's sane voice belongs to the widow (Patricia Neal) engaged to Judas (Hugh Marlowe). A capital tour, Arlington Cemetery and Lincoln Memorial, the blackboard of "the smartest man in the world" (Sam Jaffe). "There are several thousand questions I'd like to ask you." The title refers to the "dramatic but not destructive" miracle, half an hour around the globe with no power other than Bernard Herrmann's Theremin quiver. It has its pacifist and evangelical sides, though the joke is that the testy alien is not here to redeem the human race but to smite the pests who are getting too big for their britches—Shaw's "to make war on war," via a benevolent dictatorship policed by metallic Golems. Thoughtful neutrality is the Wise mode until a confession in a stalled elevator summons forth a modicum of Wellesian chiaroscuro, a tyke's nocturnal wander to the spaceship puts his Lewton days to good use. Resurrection and sermon conclude the allegorical debate. "Apparently, I'm not as cynical about Earth's people as you are." For this High Noon of the flying-saucer sect, Hawks in the same year already has his Rio Bravo riposte (The Thing from Another World). With Billy Gray, Lock Martin, and Frances Bavier. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |