The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

An alien lands and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.

• Director: Robert Wise
• Genre:Drama / Family / Sci-Fi / Thriller
• Runtime:92 minutes

Cast

Michael Rennie : Klaatu
Patricia Neal : Helen Benson
Hugh Marlowe : Tom Stevens
Sam Jaffe : Professor Jacob Barnhardt
Billy Gray : Bobby Benson

A flying saucer lands on the Ellipse in President’s Park, Washington, D.C. Its pilot Klaatu emerges and declares he has come on a mission of goodwill. When he opens a small, menacing-looking device, he is shot and wounded by a nervous soldier.

In response, a large humanoid robot called Gort steps out of the ship and disintegrates all weapons present without harming the soldiers. Klaatu orders him to stop and remarks that the device he carried was in fact a gift to the President that could have been used to study life on other planets. Klaatu is taken to an army hospital, where he recovers. The military attempts to enter Klaatu’s ship, but finds it impregnable, while Gort stands motionless outside.

Klaatu meets the President’s secretary, Harley, and reveals he has a message he wants the whole world to hear, to which Harley replies that the divided world leaders would not even be able to agree on a meeting place. When Klaatu suggests he live among ordinary people to get to know them better, Harley informs him that he is in protective custody.

Klaatu escapes to a boarding house, assuming the alias “Mr. Carpenter,” the name on the laundry label of a suit he has taken. Among the residents are Helen Benson, a widow whose husband was killed in World War II, and her son Bobby. The next morning, Klaatu listens to a paranoid radio commentator and to the boarders’ speculations on the subject of his flying saucer over the breakfast table; one, Mrs. Bailey, suggests that it might be the work of the Soviets.

When Helen’s boyfriend, Tom Stephens, plans a day trip for the two of them, Klaatu offers to babysit Bobby. The boy takes Klaatu on a tour of the city, including a visit to his father’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery, where Klaatu is dismayed to learn that most of those buried there were killed in wars. Read more