I don't know about anybody else, but when I think of the 1950s, the first genre that comes to mind is science fiction. Ufo sightings and this time period go together like bread and butter, but to this day, nobody seems to have an explanation for these objects. Reports of them came from every part of the country, and the government, attempting to calm everybody, tried to tell people they were just "birds", or "a strange light on the horizon". Weather balloons. Whatever it took. The government soon realized that it couldn't control people's hunger for a phenomenon so interesting, so naturally, movies feeding on the craze started to appear all over the place. Along with War of the Worlds, this is probably my favorite 50s sci-fi movie. It is full of early cold war tension and atmosphere, and even the end moral of the film has to do with the possible consequences of the cold war. The movie is about a Ufo that lands in the capital of the US. The US military is on high alert and believes this thing (whatever it is or wherever it came from) cannot be trusted. Someone that resembles a human emerges from the ship and announces they have come in peace. He extends a strange looking device to the soldiers, which they mistake for a weapon and shoot at him. Little did the americans know, the device is actually intended for the president, and it allows human beings to look at the life on other worlds. The injured spaceman goes to a hospital to heal, and the humans discover their technology is hopelessly archaic compared with the alien's. The alien also wants the humans to broadcast a message to every country on earth, but with the cold war between america and the USSR in full swing, it's not possible. The alien (Klaatu) manages to escape surveillance at the hospital and assumes the name of "Mr. Carpenter", which allows him to develop a friendship with a child named Bobby. Later on, Klaatu becomes concerned that humans have been able to develop the most powerful and dreadful weapon ever seen: nuclear energy. This prompts him to turn off power everywhere on the planet as a show of force. Later, Klaatu is killed by a gunshot, but Helen (Bobby's mother) revives him. We learn that Klaatu's resurrection unfortunately doesn't last forever. At the end of the film, Klaatu talks to people surrounding his spacecraft one last time and tells them humanity must put an end to war or else Klaatu's world will put an end to humanity. He and his robotic servant then leave. This movie is very good. It might seem a bit tired by modern standards, given how many alien-centric movies there are, but the 50s was the first decade to really make these things popular (at least in movies). It shows us the utter futility and ridiculousness of war and how earth might appear like a ridiculous place to extraterrestrial visitors. We kill each other because of our beliefs, destroy the environment, and would also probably kill the aliens for being different than us. The movie has an obvious cold war theme to it, because atomic weapons are mentioned a lot, and they are the one weapon the aliens fear. Given humankind's track record, the aliens don't feel safe letting us have access to them. Alongside movies like War of the Worlds, Thing From Another World, and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, this is one of the 50's best sci-fi experiences.
Review of The Day the Earth Stood Still
