Forbidden Planet

I snagged For­bid­den Plan­et from the library this week­end and watched it on Sat­ur­day. I also picked up Fellini’s Satyri­con and Ina­gak­i’s The 47 Ronin.

For­bid­den Plan­et is an excel­lent sci­ence-fic­tion movie. Appar­ent­ly it is loose­ly based on Shake­speare’s The Tem­pest which hap­pens to be my favorite of Bil­ly’s plays. I grabbed it most­ly because of the open­ing song in The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show. Leslie Nielsen [pre-screw­ball com­e­dy] and the love­ly Ann Fran­cis are the stars.

The film fea­tures the first all elec­tron­ic score in cin­e­ma his­to­ry [or so it claims] and has excel­lent spe­cial effects and pro­duc­tion val­ues. If you see it, keep in mind that it was made in 1956. For­bid­den Plan­et is heav­i­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal and makes no bones about it. Per­haps what is most impres­sive about the film is that it makes no bones about any­thing, due to the nature of the char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, every­one gets right to the point. There is no inten­tion­al arti­fice. Per­haps most notice­able in this respect [at least for me] are the spar­ing ref­er­ences to Chris­tian­i­ty. For exam­ple, on approach to Altair IV in eclipse, a crew­man makes the com­ment ‘The Lord sure made some great stuff.’ I read this as a 1950s attempt to insert a bit of reli­gion into the film but not in an awk­ward way. The man­ner in which it is deliv­ered [non­cha­lant­ly] and the sit­u­a­tion in which it occurs [look­ing at a beau­ti­ful coro­na] let me know that the guys on the ship have a broad­er view of Chris­tian­i­ty than just about any­one I know. This is a ver­sion of a reli­gion that does­n’t get in any­one’s way. The dia­logue is always straight­for­ward, almost dar­ing you to judge it.

Oth­er 1950s val­ues are quite present, men take their hats off when they enter a house, rise when a woman enters a room and then imme­di­ate­ly objec­ti­fy her like crazy. Of course, this is Ann Fran­cis role in the whole film: an inno­cent, scant­i­ly-clad, nubile temp­ta­tion. Even though she has nev­er had con­tact with men oth­er than her father and has had no con­tact with women, she still pos­sess­es wom­an­ly wiles, most point­ed­ly as a tease. I can for­give all of this though, after all, this was made about 50 years ago.

Oth­er sorts of atavis­tic themes are dealt with as well. The Krell, a race that pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied the world of Altair IV, had reached a state of near-utopia when they were all mys­te­ri­ous­ly killed in one night. How this hap­pened, what killed the crew of a ship from a pre­vi­ous expe­di­tion and what is killing the crew of Leslie Nielsen’s ship are the main mys­ter­ies to be solved. In the lab­o­ra­to­ries of the Krell it is pos­si­ble to glimpse the glo­ries of the past and also move toward an answer to the mind behind all of this destruc­tion. In the end, free­dom is paid for by the renun­ci­a­tion of pow­er and accep­tance of weak­ness. The film gave me the feel­ing that no mat­ter how close to per­fec­tion human­i­ty might get, there will always be some­thing lurk­ing deep down with­in.

Rob­by the Robot has some remark­able abil­i­ties even though he gives off the rank aro­ma of a man in an unwieldy rub­ber suit. The edit­ing is pret­ty stan­dard but is also used cre­ative­ly to get around some of the seams where spe­cial effects fail. The elec­tron­ic score is meant to be oth­er­world­ly and despite the slight overuse of a theremin it does a pret­ty good job. I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly think it is a good score but in the end it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter.

If you like old sci-fi films then you should give this one a watch. Its right up there with The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Some Rather Poor For­bid­den Plan­et links. [the sites are ugly but the reviews are alright]

• Forbidden-Planet.org
• Unof­fi­cial For­bid­den Plan­et
• Clas­sic Sci-Fi Review