The War of the Worlds (26 August 1953)
directed by Byron Haskin
starring Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Cremayne, Robert Cornthwaite, Sandro Giglio, Lewis Martin, Paul Prees, Vernon Rich, Cedric Hardwicke, Wittorio Cramer
|
MPAA rating: Studio: Paramount Pictures Script: Barré Lyndon Based on the book by: H. G. Wells Music: Leith Stevens Running time: 85 minutes Tags: Action; aliens; Drama; Horror; invasions; Los Angeles; novel adaptation; nuclear bombs; Science Fiction; UFOs Tactical strength: [7/10]
|
(video rating)
After watching Stephen Spielberg's version of H. G. Wells War of the Worlds, I decided to watch Byron Haskin's 1953 version for comparison. Both directors chose to follow a single main character through the terrors of an alien invasion, but they differ in the type of character they choose for the protagonist. Spielberg made his protagonist an everyday blue-collar worker, which gave his version an Everyman feel but limited the reactions his character could have to the Martian invasion. Haskin uses a nuclear physicist as his protagonist, which gives Haskin's character a much broader range of reactions to an alien attack.
In Haskin's version, Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) shows up to investigate the landing of a meteorite in a rural California town near Los Angeles. Dr. Forrester works as the Pacific Institute of Science and Technology, which made me chuckle when I though of Dr. Forrester saying, "Yes, I'm from PIST." Anyway, Dr. Forrester notices some very strange anomalies about the meteor, such as the meteor not having enough mass for its size. The meteor radiates too much heat for direct investigation, so Dr. Forrester accepts the invitation of a local priest, Matthew Collins (Lewis Martin), to spend the night and attend the town square dance. At the dance, Dr. Forrester meets Sylvia (Ann Robinson), and they pretty much remain together for the remainder of the film. In spite of the human's best efforts to communicate a desire for peaceful relations, the aliens attack.
Dr. Forrester takes Sylvia in his private plane, and he tries to fly back to Los Angeles. He flies too low to the ground, hits a tree and crashes near a farm house. He and Sylvia make their way to the house, but seen realize they have ended up in the middle of a primary alien landing area. In the farmhouse, they see an alien that runs away when Dr. Forrester throws some debris at it. The two escape from the farm house and make their way back to Los Angeles. The army tries to attack the Martians with a nuclear bomb, but the alien technology completely protects the aliens and their craft. All seems lost. Dr. Forrester's coworkers estimate the Martians can take over the entire planet in six days, and mobs form in Los Angeles preventing Dr. Forrester from leaving to try one last attempt to stop the aliens through biological means.
Although most alien invasion stories do focus some attention on the aliens themselves, we could lump most alien invasion movies into the same category as natural disaster movies. The effects for the alien or the disaster might delight, but the meat of the movie comes from watching how people react to the stress of the unknown. And from the way a movie portrays human reactions, gives us a pretty good view about the director's view of human nature. Human curiosity always comes to the surface first. The local population around the first landing near Los Angeles recognizes their own curiosity and sees the meteor as a windfall. They jokingly plan hot dog stands and souvenir shops to make a profit from all the people that will visit the meteor. When the aliens turn violent, we usually see two types of people, those that stay themselves and those that change radically. In The War of the Worlds, Dr. Forrester remains generally calm, cool, and collected. Even while under attack, he marvels at the alien technology, but he also has no problem taking an axe to a mechanical eye that threatens him and Sylvia. (He does save the detached eye for further research.) Through much of the movie, Haskin shows crowds of people calmly following the direction of police and other authorities leaving their homes, camping out in the hills, waiting calmly for the resolution of hostilities. Only just at the end do we see mobs vandalizing shops and vehicles, mostly as a desperate attempt to flee. Haskin clearly believes that most people under stress remain decent toward each other. Perhaps because The War of the Worlds comes just four years after the end of World War II, people might have been much more likely to take direction from a government that had issued numerous bomb alerts and still maintained active civil defense chapters.
By today's standards, The War of the Worlds has pretty unbelievable effects, but you can tell that Haskin took enormous care with the effects available to him at the time. The effects do work well to establish the deadly nature of the Martians and the unbelievable firepower they could produce with even just a single craft. The acting also remains remarkably low-key for a 1950s film. In many cases you would expect over the top acting but just about every character, but Haskin keeps his cast from blowing their tops -- except for a couple requisite screams from Ann Robinson. Overall, I would rate both Spielberg's and Haskin's efforts about the same. They take a different approach by choosing different protagonists. They both use the latest effects possible to create a terrifying and deadly alien force, and both create an interesting study of the human reaction to cataclysmic events.
