Directed by Robert Wise / Screenplay by Edmund H. North

An early success for a prolific director whose later credits would include The Sound of Music and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Robert Wise’s genre milestone The Day the Earth Stood Still is among the first and finest of the nuclear-age science fiction parables that proliferated in the 1950s. Against the chilly backdrop of the Cold War and the developing nuclear arms race, filmmakers in Hollywood and elsewhere were turning to science fiction to explore the implications of the political stand-off between East and West. A rash of invasion movies including It Came from Outer Space (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) saw extraterrestrial menaces becoming metaphors - of varying subtlety - for the threat of communism; and at the lurid end of the scale, atomic bomb tests were responsible for unleashing The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953, a defrosted dinosaur), Godzilla (1954, a giant sea monster), Them! (1954, giant mutant ants), and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955, a giant mutant octopus). By comparison with such sensational fare, The Day the Earth Stood Still offers a more philosophical take on the dangers of the Cold War, and is all the more powerful for that. A flying saucer lands in Washington D.C., its pilot Klaatu (Michael Rennie) bringing a message of peace for mankind - but he is barely down the ramp before he is shot and wounded by a trigger-happy American soldier. Retaliation is swift, courtesy of Klaatu’s robot servant Gort - and as the stand-off escalates, the human race is confronted by a simple choice: “Join us and live in peace,” declares Klaatu at the film’s conclusion, “or pursue your present course and face obliteration.”

Framed Dimensions: 400mm x 315mm

Acrylic on 230gsm Winsor & Newton canvas paper

Glazed, mounted and framed

Supplied with signed letter of authenticity from Barnaby.