PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological, sociological*
Dr. Carrington: Knowledge is more important than life, Captain. We've only one excuse for existing - to think, to find out, to learn.
Given that most SF-films of the late forties were serials like THE PURPLE MONSTER STRIKES, it's rather stunning that the first two years of the 1950s showed Hollywood producers validating the genre with such exceptional works as DESTINATION MOON in 1950, and both THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and THE THING in 1951.
Producer and maybe-part-time director Howard Hawks had never made a metaphenomenal film before since the beginnings of his career in the late 1920s. Not having read any in-depth treatments of the subject, I would guess that the project, which adapted a classic John W. Campbell Jr. novella, appealed to Hawks as a new venue for extolling one of his favorite themes: the admirability of the seasoned professional, this time not contending with the perils of the air or the sea, but with dangers "from another world."
The story initially centers on a group of Air Force officers in Alaska. Though Captain Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) is nominally in command, he's been made a figure of fun by his men for having been out-drunk by a female acquaintance, and left in embarrassing circumstances. Hendry takes the jibes like a good sport, establishing one aspect of his admirable nature. Then Hendry's aid is requested at a North Pole research installation by a respected scientist, Doctor Carrington. Hendry's somewhat ambivalent when he arrives and meets again with Nikki, the woman who embarrassed him, though it's clear they both still have some "heat" between them. Hendry then takes command of an expedition to unearth a strange foreign object that Carrington and his fellow scientists have detected buried in the Arctic ice: a bonafide flying saucer. The attempts of the Air Force to dislodge the UFO destroy it, but one alien passenger, "the Thing," survives to menace all of the inhabitants of the isolated outpost.
Given that THE THING is so well-known among SF-fans, I won't dwell on the specifics of the creature's campaign to conquer the Earthmen, save to point out the opposing attitudes of Hendry and Carrington. Hendry is willing to take the Thing prisoner for study if possible, but when the monster proves dangerous to his men, he's first and foremost concerned with ending the threat to his men. As the above quote shows in part, Carrington is not concerned with immediate survival but with somehow tapping into or even subordinating himself to the superior "knowledge" of the alien visitor. That said, one admirable aspect of the Charles Lederer script is that Carrington is never just a simplistic turncoat against his own kind. Though generally projecting an emotionless facade, the scientist's fanaticism is glossed by his having driven himself to mental exhaustion by his passion to learn the Thing's nature.
Indeed, though Hawks and his collaborators emphasize the primacy of the short-term view, that of survival for both the humans at the outpost and for the human race generally, THE THING is admirable in displaying the passion that all of the scientists feel for "the long-term view," discovering a new aspect of the universe. Even Carrington, who foolishly turns on his fellow humans in his passion for knowledge, is not utterly condemned by the script, given that he's spared the fate of many a mad scientist, being merely injured, not killed, by a rampaging monster.
Later versions of the story would emphasize the original novella's concept of the Thing as a shape-changing mimic. Yet there's a special charm to Hawks' "intellectual carrot." As unlikely as a human-form vegetable may seem, the Thing's humanoid form serves to make the idea of a plant-based alien species more persuasive than, say, an alien who really did look like an overgrown tuber (I'm thinking of Roger Corman's hilarious fiend from IT CONQUERED THE WORLD here).
The primary patterns here are cosmological and sociological, though a few critics have attempted to see the Thing as an "evil id" figure born from Hendry's consciousness, given that Hendry is a bit of a "male monster" to Nikki. However, Hendry never really seems out of control, and so if the Thing is anyone's evil id, he would seem to have been conjured from Carrington's unknown complexes.
I greatly appreciate your fine review, Gene. The Thing (with or without the Another World tag) is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's the nearest to a small scale King Kong for the Fifties that I can think if. Like the earlier film it has a technical perfection. It's "talky", but so was KK some of the time. It takes a long time for the Thing to actually show up; yet Kong took his time, too.
ReplyDeleteThe Thing doesn't quite have the heart of KK in its characterizations, though Hendry's a good guy. Scotty's maybe the nearest there is to a thoroughly likable, totally decent real human being the average viewer can identify with. I love Scotty, and Douglas Spencer's somewhat over the top playing of him never gets old with me.
The terror of the predicament these military men were subjected to is nicely suggested, with few graphic Big Reveals till the latter part of the film. There's little (anything?) "sensational" about The Thing aside from its "exploitation" title. Howard Hawkes & RKO needed a "hook" to draw the audiences in; and draw them they did.
What more so say? This is a movie I could carry on about for literally hours, but I'll spare you that and instead try to cut to the chase of what makes this movie such an enduring classic of its genre. That it tells a story, and does it well, is a key factor, as this is a picture that (give or take) preserves the unities. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. There's a neatness to the way it was put together. These are more technical virtues than artistic ones, however they are used artistically.
Also in its favor is The Thing "borrowing" (to put it nicely) certain aspects of its story, structure and human drama from earlier films. One can see the small group of men up against a dangerous, mysterious and at times a seemingly invisible enemy in such earlier picture as The Lost Patrol, Gunga Din, Five Came Back, Bataan and Sahara, which told similar stories set in different places. There are some similarities with John Ford's cavalry western, Fort Apache, especially in the conflict between two very different ways of approaching how to deal with an enemy.
What The Thing From Another World lacks, and lacks most, is enough people to call it not only a classic (this much is widely accepted now), but a literally great movie. I consider it a masterpiece. There are a few others out there who feel the same. It's seldom (ever?) ranked as in the same league with such other Fifties classic films, as All About Eve, Sunset Blvd, High Noon, From Here To Eternity, Shane, On The Waterfront and I'll stop there for a breather. As Serious Cinema it can't compete with those more "issues focused" pictures. Its greatness lies in its form, the manner in which it was made, the elegance of its structure and compositions.
As always, John, great to read your thoughts on classic films. Since you mention other flicks that emphasize small groups of people in dire circumstances, I wonder if you've seen Hawks's 1939 aviation-drama ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS. It's not the first of Hawks's "admirable professionals" films, but I think it's one of the most effective. It's also similar in that it features female characters-- two in place of THE THING's one-- intruding on the male preserve, sort of like the later HATARI.
ReplyDeleteI confess that the original novella, Campbell's "Who Goes There," is one of the few SF-classics I've never read. But, given that I've read other Campbell books and have never found him to be very good with female characters, I suspect that Nikki Nicholson is probably an original creation of the script. Despite Hawks's reputation as a director concerned with "male matters," he was pretty damn good with giving his female characters a lot of style and class.
Thanks for your response, Gene. Thing51 (maybe a better way to reference the film) does evoke the Howard Hawks cinematic universe. I have noticed some similarities with Only Angels Have Wings, didn't mention the film probably due to its being overpopulated (sic?), lacking the extreme isolation of the later picture, though it is set far from the U.S., making is geographically quite a distance when it first came out.
ReplyDeleteAs I think about Thing51 it occurs to me that it somewhat anticipates the sci-fi cycle of the Fifties (as per the late Bill Warren's wonderful book, Keep Watching The Skies!), whose title comes from one of the last lines of the film.
Add Freud and Shakespeare into the mix and Forbidden Planet gives off a similar vibe, though it lacks the sublime glibness of Thing51. Creature From The Black Lagoon has some similarities as well, though I find it prosaic and not so well played by its cast. Overall, the Jack Arnold-William Alland series from U-I features films also dealing with characters encountering troubles with fantastic creature, and with limited resources; although by the time Tarantula came along they had napalm to work with, and Clint Eastwood to deliver it.
Of the more earthbound sci-fi pictures from the period, Them! did a fine job, making it (perhaps) the first of the truly bug-eyed monster flicks, and damn good one. Gigantism (giantism?),--whatever one calls creatures or even people who grow to stupendous proportions--itself grew through the Fifties, whether it was crabs, preying mantises or wronged women, such as the 50 foot one that's a favorite of mine. Then Godzilla arrived from Japan.
The cycle lasted into the early Sixties, and I think that Bill Warren was justified in continuing his discussion of Fifties sci-fi into at least 1962. Mysterious Island, though set during the period of the American Civil War, worked marvelous variations on the theme of the few against the many, or, as the case may be, the small against the large. Period sci-fi came into vogue, in a manner of speaking, with the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, then really took off, or at least Jules Verne adaptations did, with Around The World In 80 Days.
Yet, before winding this up, to get back to Howard Hawks and his largely but not exclusively male ethos, those values, or morals, if you will, permeate much of the American sci-fi of the post-1950 period, which had run its course by 1962. That decade itself, the Sixties, was producing more cerebral, less men's men kinds of films aside from westerns. There was less emphasis on monsters, more on science itself, as well as philosophy and psychology.
Nowadays, well, high tech is everywhere in films (and in the world itself), far more so than even in the relatively (by pre-world war standards) advanced 1950's. Robots are big,--as well as real--as I had major surgery performed by one. This itself would have been sci-fi back in the Fifties. Superheroes have replaced the more Common Man types of the old days. They're practically beyond macho. I rather miss the innocence of the sci-fi of my childhood. What I miss the most is the grounded humanity of the old days; in other words, movies as much about people as things.
In response to your note that THE THING anticipated the SF-cycle, I was tempted to write in the review that I think Hawks's movie provided a virtual template for many, though not all, films of the fifties. Most SF-films of the thirties and forties still have a slightly musty Victorian feel, like they can't quite manage to see how SF-elements would work in the contemporary world. For the FRANKENSTEIN films, it was an aesthetic choice, but the attitude prevails in all the other "mad scientist" films prior to the fifties: if it's not a story about a scientific over-reacher, who cares? THE THING does have a "mad scientist" of sorts, but he's a supporting character and he fades in importance next to the depiction of practical men trying to cope with the impossible-- which might be the element most of the fifties films have in common.
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