Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet is one of those landmark films that gave birth to most of the science fiction we see today - it inspired Star Trek and gave the genre credibility, moving it from a mostly b-film status to artistic eminence - it foresaw an expansion in human exploration beyond our solar system, and the technological evolution of alien races to a point where they'd ascend physical reality. Most importantly, it took all of this seriously, so while Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were played with high camp, the actors in Forbidden Planet took their roles as seriously as actors playing Shakespeare's The Tempest - on which this is partly based. It was accepted by the public with so much enthusiasm that it was released before post-production on it was finished - preview audiences so pleased that MGM felt loathe to change a thing after testing it. It sounds and looks dream-like, successfully projecting the kind of foreign alien-like feel of exploring the unknown and mysterious.

The film takes place in the year 2200, where an expedition in a craft capable of faster-than-light speed is visiting a planet orbiting Altair, 16.7 light years away, but taking just over a year for the crew of United Planets starship C-57D. They're investigating the fate of another starship - Bellerophon, that travelled there 20 years previously. The Commander, Adams (Leslie Nielsen) is warned not to land by radio, but decides to do that despite the caution - and finds a survivor, Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon). He lives on the planet with his daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis) who was born after the mission commenced and has never seen Earth. Thirdly, there's an invention - Robby the Robot, who serves as an assistant, manufacturer and labourer. Morbius explains that after he landed, unseen forces killed all of his fellow crew members, leaving just him, his wife (who has since died from natural causes) and his daughter. While attempting to contact Earth, these unseen forces soon make themselves known, killing C-57D crew members, and while trying to unveil the culprit Adams and Lt. 'Doc' Ostrow (Warren Stevens) learn about an ancient alien civilisation called the Krell, who mysteriously vanished on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough.

It's the Krell that make Fantastic Planet really interesting, and I applaud the fact that the filmmakers resisted the urge to show us what they looked like - instead leaving that very interesting mystery to our imaginations. Instead part of their underground world is explored, where we get some kind of impression of what they were like. Their machines and computers were built so well, that they've self-maintained and kept working for 200,000 years - still powered and in perfect working order. The Krell were a million years in advance of human technological evolution, and had invented something that would eliminate the need for interaction with the material world. It's a fantastic story, originally written as Fatal Planet by Irving Block (who only dabbled very briefly with science fiction cinema) and Allen Adler, a theatrical writer who ended up being a victim of McCarthyism, never to recover. Screenwriter Cyril Hume solidified it into a workable screenplay - with much imagination, forethought and probably without knowing just how important their contribution to the genre would be.

The film got the visuals to match the fascinating story on MGM sound stage sets (the film was shot entirely indoors) that were created by primarily by art director Arthur Lonergan (the crowning achievement of his career - one that would include an Oscar nomination for his set decoration on 1966 film The Oscar.) Those dreamy, freaky matte paintings really work, especially in conjunction with effects that make it seem like vehicles are blowing up dust miles away. He was assisted by the Oscar-making machine Cedric Gibbons - an 11 time winner, and nominated 39 times overall - often being up for multiple films the same year. I'll list his Oscar-winning films below* - and yes, he actually designed the Oscar itself. It's amazing they're not called Cedrics. His 11 wins is a record for the Oscars in any category. Anyway, quite a talented team to dream up the green sky and rocky geology of Altair IV, not to mention the incredible interiors of the Krell science lab, massive computational technology, and other aspects of the extinct alien race. It's Cedric Gibbons and Arthur Lonergan's contribution to the look and feel of Fantastic Planet that helped make it the success it was and propel science fiction forward - and Gibbons wasn't overly well versed in science fiction, despite working on 1057 films from 1918 to 1956. You read that right.

Arthur Lonergan also had a hand in the creation of Robby the Robot - one of the most famous movie props in all cinematic history. Primarily he was conceived by 3-time Oscar winner A. Arnold Gillespie (his wins were for the effects on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Green Dolphin Street and Ben-Hur - he was nominated 9 other times.) His work earned him a nomination for this film, and Forbidden Planet's sole Oscar nomination for Special Effects - it would go on to be beaten by The Ten Commandments in that category. Robby the Robot is so well designed and conceived that he (I just have to use the word he) would go on to star in other films and television series, such as Forbidden Planet-follow up The Invisible Boy, Lost in Space, The Thin Man, The Twilight Zone and many, many others shows and films. It was a complicated design, with realism a matter of pride and necessity. The robot has many moving parts, lights, and moves in a believable way - inside was a stunt man, small enough to fit into the bulky prop and big enough to be able to move it. It's one of those props that has an iconic look about it, and it recently sold at auction for $5,375,000 - a record price for a film prop. Marvin Miller provided the voice, complete with synched lights - and he also ended up as the voice of Forbidden Planet's trailer.

With a truly haunting and well-conceived story, and fantastic science fiction visuals, the next element in the film that really works to a great degree is the sound, and most specifically, the score of the film - which ended up as another landmark for cinema. The team of Bebe and Louis Barron created what is the first ever electronic score for a film. Louis had designed circuits to make certain beeps, bloops, blips, twangs, whirs, whines, hums and screeches and tweaked them all into a kind of harmonic accompaniment to the action onscreen. It sounds like classic sci-fi, but was revolutionary at the time and the careful attention paid to this unusal method of scoring the film gives another impression of alien strangeness and dream-like distance from normality. It's another part of Forbidden Planet I give top marks to - it sounds perfect for what goes on and matches the visual quality of the film. Unfortunately, with MGM being 'clever' and avoiding union payments by calling Bebe and Louis Barron composers of electronic tonalities instead of musicians, they ended up forfeiting any chance they may have had for being nominated for an Oscar in that category.

With all of these technicians and crew members transforming this story into a sci-fi classic, it begs the question - what of the man who made it? Fred McLeod Wilcox, who had some family in the industry and MGM, started his career in publicity, evolved into a man who directed screen tests and one who hit big with his first full length feature, Lassie Come Home. Forbidden Planet would come at the apex of his film career, and would be his last film with MGM. Wilcox had eyes on his own independently produced films, and you get a sense of where he was heading with his first independent film I Passed for White - an early (and for it's time controversial) look at racial issues that seems to point to the fact that he was a forward thinker. Unfortunately, Wilcox would die in 1964 at the age of 56, planning to direct a big-budget film (and return to MGM) with a sequel to Forbidden Planet which never materialized. His biggest gift to this film was treating the material with respect and getting all of his actors to do exactly the same - it would have been very easy to drift off over into camp, which was what most science fiction films did at the time. Forbidden Planet is played straight, which makes it's allegorical message all the more striking and memorable.

Cinematographer George J. Folsey had an incredible career - one in which he was nominated for 13 Oscars, without winning one*** (a fate Roger Deakins was heading for until he won with Blade Runner 2049) - he shot such classic films as Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Meet Me in St. Louis. Forbidden Planet was probably his most visually remarkable film, and also one of his most difficult when considering the problems with light he had in the shiny, technical Krell loboratories which reflected light sources. He's stated that the film took two years of research to prepare shooting. He was assisted by an animator loaned from Disney, Joshua Meador - who went uncredited. He created the "Id Monster" whose outline can be seen when laser defenses and guns are pounding it and trying to hold it back. The talent put to work bringing this early science fiction film to life is as great as I've seen in any film I've reviewed so far**. It really does credit to Nicholas Nayfack and MGM for taking the chance to really develop this and not go the cheap route. The scenes in space look great considering the era they were shot in - and while the likes of Star Wars changed our perceptions of what sci-fi could look like, it still provides a great look for Altair IV from a distance.

It's a lot of fun to learn about Forbidden Planet and the way it all came together, leading on to it's success and the fact that it's name is among the dozen or so truly classic science fiction films that came from the 1950s era. I almost get as much pleasure from finding these things out than I do from watching the film - and one enhances the other. The most striking impression I take away from the film is the vanished Krell and the tantalizing hints at who they were, what they looked like and what they were capable of. By this stage in their evolution they were very intelligent, but overlooked the more basic nature of themselves, the subconscious, which led to their downfall. To say much more would mean to give away too much of Forbidden Planet's plot, which relies on a slow reveal of what's going on with Dr. Morbius and the planet. Nearly 70 years old, it has aged slightly (the garden Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis frolic in after she finishes her nude bathing is a leftover of the Munchkin village from The Wizard of Oz!) and some of the sets and Matt paintings, though gorgeous, are dated. There's a good side to that though, for it still lends the film an off-colour dream/nightmare feel - where nothing is quite real.

The film gives us a lot to think about, for our own technological evolution and our own basic nature. There are times when it really feels like our technology is evolving to the point where it conflicts with our baser instincts. Schoolkids are often bullied on social media - to the point of suicide. The atom bomb gave us the ability to wipe out whole countries and civilizations, but we're not that long from existing in caves and bludgeoning rivals with clubs. We take many technological steps without carefully considering the effects - in fact we always allow invention without much thought as to the by-product, and this is exactly what happened to the Krell. It wiped out their entire species. Nielsen's Adams posits that we'll be at that same stage in one million years, but I think the more real estimate would be 200 years. If there are further unexpected advances in our knowledge, crazy things can and will happen - there's nothing as unpredictable now as our future. I once read a fictional tale about a species who learned how to weave their consciousness into the very fabric of space and time, and freed themselves from the physical world. If not practically possible, it does expand the mind to dream of such things. I think Forbidden Planet did just that.



* Cedric Gibbons won Oscars for : The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), The Merry Widow (1934), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Gaslight (1944), The Yearling (1946), Little Women (1949), An American in Paris (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)

** Costumer Helen Rose (winner of 2 Oscars) designed the miniskirt Anne Francis wore that got the film banned in Spain. Set decorators Edwin B. Willis and Hugh Hunt had won 10 Oscars between them. Editor Ferris Webster had been nominated for two.

Those 13 nominations (and losses) were for : The Balcony (1963), Executive Suite (1954), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953), Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), Green Dolphin Street (1947), The Green Years (1946), The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Thousands Cheer (1943), The Gorgeous Hussy (1936), Operator 13 (1934), Reunion in Vienna (1933)

Bellerophon (the name of ship that transported Dr. Morbius to Altair IV) is a hero from Greek mythology. His greatest feat was the destruction of the Chimera, a monster who breathed fire. According to mythology, King Proteus sent him to King Iobates to deliver a sealed message and he didn't know what it said. The message instructed King Iobates to kill the bearer of the message