The War of the Worlds
H.G. Welles’s classic story of alien invasion has been one of the most adapted stories of the past century. That the first film version did not occur until Byron Haskin’s 1953 film is kind of remarkable, but I wonder how much Orson Welles’s infamous radio play in 1938 spooked producers off of it. Plus, it’s hard to imagine a filmmaker really taking the time to craft the visual effects for such a production prior to the sci-fi boom of the ’50s. It was waiting for a producer like George Pal, and a moment in time like America found itself in.
This is one of those stories where, in order to pin down intent on a new adaptation, the time in which it was made plays a part. The week before watching this one for the first time in a while, I watched the new, awful version on Prime with Ice Cube. It’s a terrible film, but I get the logic behind the choices in how the filmmakers adapted it. Watching Haskin’s film, adapted from the story by Barré Lyndon, it’s impossible to look at it any other way than through the prism of the Cold War. A couple of years earlier, Robert Wise’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” swung the door open for using our relationship with the galaxy as a way of commenting on the coming thaw between America and Russia, but here, it shows the specter of unprovoked attack on a small American town. In a way, this was “Red Dawn” three decades before “Red Dawn.”
The fundamental ideas of the Welles story remain familiar. An alien invasion. Tripods. Military is useless against the technology. The scene in the house. Destruction. The aliens are dispatched by germs. Here, the opening of the film acknowledges that we have seen the first two world wars. One of the common thematic elements of this story is how fear permeates through each telling. In Haskin’s film, it’s the fear of a sudden attack from an aggressor whose motives we are unsure of. It starts with the unknown, and then- as they lay waste to the town- the regular people hold on to what they can in order to survive.
Haskin’s film has a tricky time in juggling following with regular characters like Sylvia (Ann Robinson) and Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Berry) vs. showing the military, and focusing on that aspect of it. One of the things that made Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film- and even the recent Ice Cube film- so effective is they stayed focused on a familial unit. Here, they only do so much of that before returning to the spectacle of military vs. Martians. I will say, the spectacle of this film is terrific, even if the visual effects and designs do not stand up to the modern day. This film works as a relic of the times- of one of the strongest genre films of an era best remembered for schlock and cheese- and a template for how cinematic adaptations of Welles would work from this point forward. It’s a classic that mostly holds up.
