The War Of The Worlds (1953) ***
Dirrector Byron Haskin and famed animation producer George Pal's 1953 Cold War allegory, The War Of The Worlds, is a vivid Technicolor alien invasion disaster extravaganza. There is no denying that the film is filled with eye-popping visuals, taut action, and impressive (though dated) special effects and production design—all brought to renewed life by the 4K restoration on The Criterion Collection's recently released Blu-ray. It just didn't hold up as well as I remembered. The last time I watched it was 2005 when a special edition DVD was released to coincide with the theatrical release of Steven Spielberg's version, itself a 9/11 allegory (which I also liked less the last time I revisited).
I've never read H.G. Wells' 1898 novel (first serialized in 1897) but in the booklet accompanying the Criterion edition of the TWOTW J. Hoberman writes about how the novel's narrator compares the Martian extermination of humans to the "ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought". I think if the 1953 film had invoked that tie to colonialism, it would have held up better as time has passed.
Instead the film opts to show its characters attempting military might (which utterly fails) to appear patriotic. And while I like that religion doesn't save a pastor from getting obliterated (and becoming a martyr), in the ending (which is very different from the novel), the film's narrator (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) claims that God, who "created" microorganisms, is what saved humanity. I'm gonna say it was science, but to each their own.
Everything in TWOTW is very 1950s, sometimes amusingly so—as with flirtations between Ann Robinson's Sylvia and Gene Barry's Clayton, others times painfully so—Sylvia is working on getting a master's degree (cool) but then later on she's bringing plotting men coffee and after that basically screaming a lot.
I really appreciate a great many things about the '53 TWOTW, including its lean running time, its mostly bleak tone, and I do feel it deserves to be considered a classic. It's an important film; I won't deny that. It might have aligned with American sentiment at the time of its release. I can't say that it aligns with mine in most regards but I can say it's an entertaining, well-made, if hokey, science fiction movie.
I've never read H.G. Wells' 1898 novel (first serialized in 1897) but in the booklet accompanying the Criterion edition of the TWOTW J. Hoberman writes about how the novel's narrator compares the Martian extermination of humans to the "ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought". I think if the 1953 film had invoked that tie to colonialism, it would have held up better as time has passed.
Instead the film opts to show its characters attempting military might (which utterly fails) to appear patriotic. And while I like that religion doesn't save a pastor from getting obliterated (and becoming a martyr), in the ending (which is very different from the novel), the film's narrator (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) claims that God, who "created" microorganisms, is what saved humanity. I'm gonna say it was science, but to each their own.
Everything in TWOTW is very 1950s, sometimes amusingly so—as with flirtations between Ann Robinson's Sylvia and Gene Barry's Clayton, others times painfully so—Sylvia is working on getting a master's degree (cool) but then later on she's bringing plotting men coffee and after that basically screaming a lot.
I really appreciate a great many things about the '53 TWOTW, including its lean running time, its mostly bleak tone, and I do feel it deserves to be considered a classic. It's an important film; I won't deny that. It might have aligned with American sentiment at the time of its release. I can't say that it aligns with mine in most regards but I can say it's an entertaining, well-made, if hokey, science fiction movie.
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