Who is Watching Whom? Point of View and Loss of Control in "It Came From Outer Space"

Nostalgia: 1950s 3-D films:

Who Is Watching Whom? Point Of View in

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE

by Charles J. Garard

That small and town movie theater was me, looking up at the wide screen while wearing my 3 - D glasses and surrendering my burden of personal consciousness to the science - fiction plot.

Some individual may consciousness. However they may identify with the character on the screen, they need an assumption no responsibilities. Such as Cinerama, Panavision, 70 mm prints with six-channel Dolby stereo, IMAX screens, and 3-D more actively involve movie viewers. In Jack Arnold & # 39; s 3-D film IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953), viewers are given control over the earthlings because of the point of view when they confront the aliens is from the aliens & # 39; perspective.

This film was not the first to ready heavily on the subject camera (see LADY IN THE LAKE 1946), nor the last (see FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH movies that put the audience members in the position of a brutal serial killer); however, the fact that the characters here distinctive relaxing what they see and other religious science fiction entry in this over-stuffed 1950s decent worth of another look. With earthlings as their as fearful victims as well as the watchers. with earthlings as their doubles, viewers are able to recognize their own fear of loss of control; when they view the earthlings from the aliens & # 39; perspective, however, they are able to determine this significance of this loss.

Three-dimensional cinematography, involved audiences subjectively; they can see the character on the screen as cinematic doubles of themselves. Since the film is shot in black-and-white, the real as rendered by this Natural Vision process may But even in monochrome, 3-D can transform the Arizona desert into a life-sized, museum-like exhibit that we could, if permitted, step into The 3-D craze was short lived; constantly ongoing attempts to resurrect it with such films as the re-issued 3- D version of Tim Burton & # 39; s THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (2006) and Imax features, 3-D has never re-emerged to repeat the mass appeal magic of all those gimmicky but exciting 3-D films of the 1950s (like HOUSE OF WAX, THE MAZE, PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE, SANGAREE, MA N IN THE DARK, GUN FURY, HONDO with John Wayne, INFERNO, DEVIL & # 39; S CANYON, KISS ME KATE, TAZA SON OF COCHISE, two of the three Creature of the Black Lagoon movies, and the first-out- the-gate BWANA DEVIL.)

The protagonist 's telescope, the golfball - like spaceship itself, and the rocks of a huge avalanche are the most notable 3 - D effects, and in this film they seem less gimmicky than in other early 3 - D efforts. the protruding cyclops eyeball of each alien meant to penetrate the personal consciousness of the audiences might irritate some viewers in the same way that the spears and arrows do in the CHARGE AT FEATHER RIVER, jolting them from their comparably relaxed involvements of the subjective forward tracking shots through the desert. Unfortunately, the polarized 3-D prints used in the 1950s have been dramatically replaced by the red-and-green anaglyph versions shown in theaters and in some cases, on television. Recently, at the end of November (2006 ), the independent PLAZA Theater on Ponce De Leon in Atlanta, Georgia, ran a one-day showing of the film in 3-D., most of us today view IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) in its flat, two- dimensional version on tel evision shows or in DVD / VHS versions.

For our purposes, the fact that the film was originally shot in 3-D is no longer of major concern. This is the view of the aliens that intrigues critical scholars decades later, the subjective camerawork showing the earthlings through the cycling eyes of the aliens. The earthlings as victims. The residings of the sleepy desert town of Sand Rock, Arizona, find themselves enveloped in the billowing fog that birds the view of the viewers while the viewers themselves streets victims from behind the bubble-eye of an alien. When the protagonists are captured, the viewers participate in their abduction the way viewers of the FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH movies participate in the murders of horny teenagers at Crystal Lake. When two miners, o Even when linemen (Evening linemen) (2) Evening linemen (2) Evening linemen (2) Evening linemen Russell Johnson and Joseph Sawyer Drive along the desert road in daylight, the audience tracks them from a moving high angle that could hardly be the point of view of the earthling. Both of these perspectives give the audience, as well as the aliens, a These two affable linemen, Frank and George, tease resident amateur astronomer and writer John Putnam * (Richard Carlson) about the "riding" that the townspeople and the media have been giving him for insisting that he saw aliens George tells Putnam and Ellen that Frank, who listens to a tap he has placed on the wire, "is sure hearin '# things. "Putnam scales the ladder to listen through this phone tap, and, in, the effect haunting scenes from a 1950s science-fiction film, the audience also hears the whining - an eerie, high - pitched musical refusal that exploits our fear of, and fascination with, the unknown.

Neither sight nor sound is to be trusted in the desert by John climbs in the audience, inviting us to share his paranoia when Frank suggests that some way might be listening to whatever is on the line them. sun. As Frank points out: "After you '' ve been working on on the desert fifteen years like I have, you hear a lotta things. See a lotta things too. The sun in the sky. and lakes that are not real at all. And sometimes you think that the wind gets in the wires and hums and listeners and talks. Putnam no longer hears the walking wind; it is one of the mysteries of the film that he never unravels. He merely knows that something is tapping It is something has not disclosed its identity or its purpose while it continues to manipulate people and events like a cosmic film director, it understands the control that Putnam has clearly lost.

[Note * After Putnam presents Dr. Snell with an article unimaginately titled "Report on the Arrival of Strangers from Outer Space" and walks away, his former mentor explains to Putnam as an intense young man. The assistant calls Putnam "an odd one," and Snell responds: "More than odd, Bob. Individual and lonely. A man who thinks for himself." Putnam has already been called an amateur astronomer by a surly local newspaperman who prints a story with the unofficial headline: "Stargazer Sees Martians." Pete, the helicopter pilot who first flies Putnam and Ellen to the site of the UFO crash, tries to warn Putnam, as does Ellen, not to tell the others what he "thinks" he has seen, and expresses surprise that Putnam is going back to Sand Rock. He tells him that the townspeople will not let him "walk around in the open."]

[Note ** History majors and film schools need not be reminded of the political climate during the time when the film was made.]

After George tells Frank about Jane (Kathleen Hughes) That night, the two are captured by one of the cyclops aliens who protrudes his eye from the screen. For a moment, the audience is no longer safe in the theater we are this later later when we see this later when Putnam and Ellen (Barbara Rush) encounter George & # 39; s zombie-like duplicate in a scene again effectively photographed from The alien 's point of view. The bubble representing the systematic eye and the sparkling mist surrounding it both condense into a solid replica of George & # 39; s arm an instant before it touches Ellen & # 39; s shoulder. It actually happens to alien inadvertently reveals himself to Putnam and Ellen by starting point blank at the sun and by speaking in a voice that sounds as if it had been recorded in a tin shed. Putnam knows t hat what he thinks he sees is an illusion, but he rationalizes his confusion over identities by again blaming the sun for playing tricks on him. The investigated, not the investigators, the watched and the watchers , he ignores any edge which revolver he carries and give him and drags Ellen back to town to get the sheriff.

Putnam is an ineffectual adolescent in the face of "parental authority figures" like the professor, the pushy newspaper reporter, the share as the audience, we share Putnam & # 39; s frustration at not being able to convince He has failed to use a gun against the obviously superior force of the aliens, yet the weapon grants him temporary equality with Army major, and especially the small-town sheriff until he fights with the sheriff (Charles Drake) and he fights with the sheriff He has regained at least a limited amount of control over his life.

Curiously, the audience remains in a neutral position when Putnam grapples with the sheriff, even though the 3-D process could place the audience within range of thrown punches, flying chairs, and phallic gun barrels. Like a boy who whistles in the dark to mask his fears, Putnam tells, the depth process by including such gimmicks, but by arnold resists the overkill temptation by reserving the first-person point of view for the sequences in which aliens directly contact the earthlings. the unseen alien who speaks to him from the sine. "Putnam reveals that he can not trust what he can not see, even though he knows that his vision in the bright lit desert is not trustworthy. The alien, who inscribes that he and his fellow travelers have souls and minds and "are good," reveals himself to be a cyclops more frightening than Polyphemus but much more civilized (he does not eat visitors the way that the son of Poseidon devours the men of Odysseus, Putnam turns away in horror.

The fact that the eye of this cyclopinsis the space in it as well as the space in beyond the screen in 3-D shows substantiates such a reading, and both of these fears representative, for many, a loss of control or power (a Have no control, his being aware of his sheriff, more than Putnam, representations). Even in the daylight, however, Putnam has been blind, unlike the other humans who have not caught a glimpse of the roving eye, he becomes aware of his handicap - his loss of control Even though the alien has identified his race as "good," he frigthens Putnam by abandoning the requested knowledge. Knowledge, after all, has a price. Even when he does "see" what is going on, he can not share this vision ; he can only realize that he, like the sheriff and the others, is definitely not in control.

When the aliens capture Ellen and create a double phenomenon can be sent to entrap Putnam, the audience sees her abduction from her perspective as she honks at Frank & # 39; s duplicate in the middle of the road, then from the alien & # 39; s point of view as the duplicate apparently drops its disguise to become the reality that terrified Putnam earlier. The point of view prevails the audience from seeing the alien 's visage a second time. the audience, whether or not they are wearing their 3-D glasses, the perspective of a judge with cool, superior intellect, but the people they are observing and judging are not others - not members of the starship Enterprise distanced from their lives by centers - but themselves; viewers can see elderly. These characters really are doubles created for an audience to view and - through the aliens - observer, judge, and control.

Curiously, Ellen & # 39; s double show to be less benevolent then the other aliens; when Putnam and the audience see the mysterious figure atop the hill, she wears a black evening gown with a flowing scarf instead of the conservative schoolteacher suit she wears during her absence, resembling the heroine on the cover of a romantic paperback novel as well as a film noir heroine or femme fatale, compels Putnam to follow, which she does. After all, he does not trust his visual judgment in the daylight. How can I have the function of to mine. he expect to fare better in the dark?

However, Putnam does not gain the courage to penetrate the darkness and journey into its center. Eleven who informs him that he can no longer be trusted. She tries to lure him into the River Styx that separates them, then When she shoots a white ray at him like Harry Potter and his friends sending a powerful force from their magic wands, which to in kill him with a phallic wand (which, in 3 - D, protrudes from the screen like the sword of Achilles) After their power, the aliens (this power in her hand is ineffectual, however, as it swings in a wide swath above his head. After their power, the aliens ( He fires a revolver at her, penetrating her shell (and the audience '# 39; s) and the audience, since they see this alien' s point of view) are unable to destroy the human original (and viewer counterpart) ); the alien and the audience fall into the gulf betwe Instant, they confront the doubles and their originals - the never again in the film are any on-screen activities or earthlings seen from the point of view of the aliens, both Putnam and the audience have achieved a state of awareness. captives.

This double, however, possesses a stronger weapon than the wand which, instead of cutting Putnam in half, only carves slashes in a cave wall. This phallic machine that shoots a more powerful white ray at a spherical object can destroy the whole earth - enabling enough to make it a hot topic on George Noory & # 39; s middle-of-the-night radio show COAST TO COAST AM. "look at its power," intones the alien in human form, *** charging how this power allow them to be completely in control. "These doubles, the audience sees, are stronger than, and more in control of, the originals than the originals are of themselves, even though they are illusory projections.

[*** Society is represented by the sheriff who reaches for his gun (which, in 3-D, is in the audience's face) while talking about a relationship between air temperature and murder (listen to the policeman's comments on the same topic in the 1981 film noir masterpiece BODY HEAT). Society can not deal with its own repressed nature, so it projects this onto the monster or, in this case, an alien race. (Putnan, who wanders the desert in search of a glimpse of the creature, is waiting, as Robert Ensign asserts in his biological perspective of the film, to become social, just as primates had to when they jumped down from the trees and formed survival groups on the savanna.) In the cave, Putnam first reveals his survival skills by shooting not only the alien double, the harbinger of death, but the audience. Then he saves mankind by acknowledging the potency of its superior force: "You can always reach out and destroy us [the society] with that. "]

The aliens, despite their control, can not destroy the human earthlings because they are primitive form of themselves, and they was was they the people of the humans and the human who invaded their world. When the duplicate of Putnam The person of the human prisoners, none of what has been harmed, the other alien duplicates look on. Except for the different - but earthly - garments that all wear, one group is a mirror image of the other. the science is that the humans nor of the aliens; the audience is free to evaluate both the human origins (their counterparts) and the alien duplicates (the illusory but powerful projections of themselves).

After Putnam emerges from the mine with the abducted humans and the other humans to give up control of any of them are imagined control anyway - seals off the entrance, the sheriff assumes that the alien doubles have have been The ground shakes as the engines of the spaceship are activated and in the reverse of the opening shot of the film, the aliens leave. Ellen asks if the aliens have gone for good, and the camera brings the audience in for "a close-up of Putnam as he delivers a dose of 1950s philosophical moralizing." Just for now, "putnam utters wistfully." It is not the right time for us to meet. "The dual perspective might invite us to add:" The right time for us to meet ourselves. "Putnam continues that" there & # 39; ll be other nights, other stars for us to watch.

(1955) and much later in such high-tech films as the special effects extravaganza CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and the somewhat maudlin ET THE EXTRA- TERRESTRIAL, but, unfortunately, mankind, still thinking that it is in control, remains blind and repressed under tons of rock. Even in the glare of tricky sunlight. The message of IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (the screenplay was based on a treatment by Let 's hope this was the message that the little boy sitting on the front row of his father & # 39; s theater wearing those cardboard 3-D glasses, like other little boys and girls who are now grown-ups, came away with.

END