Now we come to one of the strangest SF movies of the early 1950s, and ultimately the most risible.
This is a 1952 movie about an American astronomer — played by Peter Graves, later of Mission: Impossible and Airplane fame — who sees photos of Mars and concludes that an intelligent civilization lives there. So he manages to send a signal (via Morse Code) and gets replies that indicate an advanced civilization there that has developed all sort of high technology dwarfing anything on Earth. This news crashes the world economy. Meanwhile, a Russian agent living in the Andes, of all places, intercepts his signals and… maybe is faking the Martian replies. But the movie wants to have it another way, to salve religious sensibilities.
There are lots of incidental aspects of this movie to comment on, so I will step through it with bulleted notes.
And in this case, the entire movie is online:
- “This is a story not yet told” intones the narrator, portentously
- The Peter Graves character, Chris Cronyn, is visiting a nearby observatory (which is obviously Mt. Palomar), where an astronomer there shows him recent photos from Mars. These “photos” are obviously crude diagrams of what early astronomers like Percival Lowell thought were evidence of “canals” — fuzzy diagrams of black lines and hubs emanating from a north pole — except that here there are jagged, crudely drawn “mountains” at the top of each diagram. A later photo shows these mountains much reduced, and Cronyn concludes that the mountains are ice and that the intelligent beings are mining the ice into canals to feed their crops. And so, it’s suddenly urgent that he tries to send a message to Mars, to make contact. This has been his goal, for his entire career.
- His wife, Linda, introducing a major theme here, is greatly alarmed. Such contact might mean “death.” After a visit home to check on their kids, Chris and Linda abscond to his adjacent lab (a nice walk across a sound stage depicting city lights below their property), with his equipment to receive and send messages into outer space. Linda rants: The whole world is scared, about everything that science has made possible. (Remember this was only a few years after atom bombs had been dropped in Japan.) Chris counters: this is what we’ve worked for! Martian civilization could advance human civilization by 2000 years! She relents.
- Meanwhile, we see a hut in the Andes mountains, where a statue of Christ looks down on the cabin, as three men, obviously Soviet officials, challenge the man inside for his results. The man is former Nazi Franz Calder, who invented something called a “hydrogen valve” which enables reading Martian signals. Cronyn, it develops, found diagrams for the valve after WWII and built one himself.
- In California, Cronyn’s son suggests using the value of “pi” to establish contact. Cronyn sends 3 1 4 1 5… And that’s all. This as an American Admiral shows up asking about results.
- Soon enough the Martians apparently reply with a longer value for pi. 3 1 4 1 5 9…
- And then the news of contact with Mars makes headlines around the world. Martians claim a lifespan of 300 years, that they can feed 1000 of their people per acre, that they use “cosmic energy”.
- And so the world economy crashes. Miners figure there’s no point in mining, since advanced technologies are soon available. Steel mills close.
- Now: what’s elided here is how Cronyn, or anyone else, establishes an actual language with the Martians. We only see Cronyn sending Morse code. Even if, as we come to understand, the signals from Mars were fakes by the Russian agent in the Andes, why did no one wonder what language the Martians were using?
- And so on. The US President realizes the messages from Mars are dangerous, and wants to shut down Cronyn’s lab. Further messages include passages from the Sermon on the Mount, and the world decides that “God speaks from Mars.” A small family in Russia removes photos of Soviet officials from their house and digs up a casket and carries it to their shrine. Until the Russian military shows up and shoots them all.
- Then, an avalanche seems to wipe out the Nazi operative in the Andes. The messages from Mars cease.
- Until, some time later, that operative, Calder, shows up in Cronyn’s lab, admitting his role in all this. He admits sending the messages to ruin the economy, and overturn the Soviet Union. Cronyn is determined to destroy his lab to prevent any further mischief. Repeatedly, it’s been mentioned that hydrogen leaks from that valve could explode given any fire. Now, his wife asks for a light for her cigarette, even though she’s never before smoked.
- A new message come in. Calder shoots the monitor, and triggers an explosion that wipes out the lab, and the Cronyns.
- Later, the US Senate acknowledges the message: “Ye have done well…” Which they recognize as a line from the Bible. Church bells ring; people pray. It seems the messages from Mars were really from God, after all.
- Final scene is in the Oval Office, as Cronyn’s two boys are there, and an official tells them, “You’re their sons.”
- And final title card appears: “The Beginning.”
This makes no sense at all. If the messages from Mars were faked by the Nazi agent Calder, at what point did God intervene? Why not earlier, or later? But mostly, it’s nonsense because the writers of this screenplay (or the play that preceded it) assumed that every discovery about the cosmos had to conform to the religious sensibilities of the local culture. It’s another example of how so many Hollywood skiffy flix of the 1950s ended with some religious evocation. It’s all about God. It’s all about humanity’s special place in the universe. This attitude is small-minded and naive, parochial, and evidence of humanity’s limited cognitive ability. It’s Hollywood pandering to the devout, who resist anything that would upset their verities.
