Siegel\'s 1956 Film Version of the Invasion

¶ … Siegel's 1956 film version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers uses a number of realistic techniques like undistorted camera angles, and shots of mundane activities and locations to establish the rationality and logic of the daytime world of small-town California. As the movie begins to shift into the nightmarish world of the alien invasion, the shots become increasingly distorted, dark and gloomy, showing the slip into the subconscious, emotional existence. Here, the movie begins to adopt a moral stance, as we see that the main characters are truly at their most human as they live through the overt terror and emotion of the night time distortions of logic and reality. It is in the daytime world of logic that they can explain away the loss of their humanity to the aliens, but in the nighttime their humanity is revealed as the emotional, subconscious mess that defines them. As the movie progresses, the distortions of camera angles and uncomfortable close-ups begin to encroach on the daytime shots, showing the protagonist's emotional and true humanity slipping into the logical, mundane world of the daytime. Gone are the undistorted camera angles and realistic techniques of the beginning sequence, as Siegel shows McCarthy confused, terrified and bewildered on a highway as cars zoom by without stopping, and alien pods appear in the most benign of places in plain daylight. Special effects in the movie are largely non-existent, and the real horror of the film is in the gradual and insidious loss of humanity shown in the movie. Ironically, Siegel's use of cinematographic techniques ultimately argues that the distorted world of darkness is the most valuable and true to emotional human nature, while the cold, rational world showcased by realistic techniques is the true danger represented by the alien's stripping of basic humanity's emotion and capacity for love.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers hovers uncertainly between graphic, mundane realism and the bizarre and supernatural world that consists of the alien invasion. In a sense, Siegel's movie is much more about an insidious symbolic invasion of the mind, rather than a literal alien invasion of the body itself. On the surface, the movie seems to be a depiction an ever-growing invasion of the sane and mundane world of realism and logic by the dark, nightmarish world of dreams.

Don Siegel's 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers tells the story of Miles Bennell (played by Kevin McCarthy), a doctor in California who returns to his small town practice to complaints of people being changed or that members of families have been altered or 'replaced'. He refers them to a psychiatrist, who neatly explains away the odd behavior as a mass hallucination. Bennell meets his old girlfriend Becky Driscoll (played by Dana Wynter), and they begin an affair against the backdrop of increasingly bizarre occurrences. A writer finds a formless body on his pool table, and a similar body is seen in Becky's basement. The bodies mysteriously disappear before they can be seen by the police, but the strange occurrences only get worse when night comes again. They try to run from the growing horror of the pod people, but they are ultimately trapped by the emotionless and robotic pod menace.

Shot in black and white, the entire movie has an aura of nostalgia and quaintness, when viewed in today's era of garish color and special effects. At the time the movie was released, this effect would likely have been much less pronounced (as black and white was still common), but today the black and white has the effect of making the viewer feel as if they have stepped back in time. This effect only seems to heighten the disturbing content of the movie, seen as a contrast against the impression of nostalgia from a quieter, simpler time.

In the beginning of the movie, a calm, rational voice-over explains that Dr. Bennell (McCarthy) has returned from a medical convention. While the tone of the voice-over is typical of classical realist techniques, the content of McCarthy's words are not, as he describes "something evil" that had taken over the town. He meets with a number of rational and intelligent people who tell of the odd occurrences, including a grocer's son and his grandmother, and Bennell's ex-fiance (played by Dana Wynter).

They couple go to an intimate dinner in a local restaurant. Here, classic straight-on shots are only disturbed by shots that reveal the restaurant is disturbingly almost empty. The dinner is interrupted by a phone call from a friend, Jack, who tells them that they must come over to see something disturbing.

At this point, the techniques of realism are replaced with a startling shift to angles and shots that showcase the nightmarish abnormality of the situation. At their friend Jack's house, the camera flashes suddenly to a disturbing, expressionless corpse placed in a surrealistic pose on a pool table. Jack is startled by McCarthy's revelation that the corpse is about Jack's size and shape, causing him to drop a beer bottle, and cut his hand. The camera lingers on Jack's cut hand and startled expression.

The movie turns from normalcy and reality to a bizarre, nightmare with a disturbing ease. It is as if the viewer simply "slips" into the nightmare as easily as if they were falling asleep. Normalcy is replaced insidiously and slowly with the bizarre and evil. The beginning of the movie suggests a normal and uneventful life. Slowly, odd events and behaviors appear, but are easily rationalized or explained away.

When the nightmare of the alien invasion is realized, it has slipped so easily and slickly into reality as to go almost unnoticed. The viewer slips suddenly from a feeling of normalcy and ease to a disjointed and bizarre nightmarish reality of shocking images. Dyna Wynter's duplicate is discovered growing in her cellar, and an unidentified blank body lies on a pool table. These images are even more disturbing in their sharp contrast to the supposed normalcy that preceded them.

The discovery of Wynter's body and the body on the pool table take place in the shadowy world of night. The discovery of the body in the cellar takes place in an environment that is dark, distorted, and placed in shadow. Everything seems almost distorted and surreal during the night, but the viewer is snapped back in to reality and normalcy as day returns, and the shadows disappear. As daylight comes and the shadows retreat, the body has disappeared, and odd behaviors have disappeared as well. In the basement, only muted shadows remain that retreat from the light, and the body is gone.

The psychiatrist logically and calmly explains to the doctor that the pods are simply part of a mass hallucination. His explanation is believable and logical, and the 'meaning' of the earlier events immediately shifts from nightmarish reality to simple delusion in a single explanation. It is as if the viewer has been snatched out of a disturbing and irrational nightmare, and placed firmly back into reality. Here, the movie's perspective changes abruptly, and the viewer is placed in the daytime grip of reality and reason, rather than the nighttime realm of irrationality and fear.

In these daylight sequences, Siegel uses classical realist techniques like eye-level shots, and clear images enhance the appearance of reality. The characters are seen in well-light, undistorted images and camera angles. Sunlight plays off their hair, and the appearance of reality is clear.

Inevitably, the movie slips back into the nightmare and irrationality. A great proportion of the movie feels as if the nightmare is spinning crazily out of control, and the viewer can do nothing to try and explain way the bizarre occurrences. Reason has lost its grip in the nightmarish world, as Kevin McCarthy runs down a highway and screams for help from passing cars. He is ignored, and leaps into the back of a truck that is filled with pods. This scene seems to be taken straight from the irrational and muddled thinking of a nightmare, rather than the rational thoughts of the day, where it is doubtful that no one would have stopped, and almost unthinkable that a pickup truck would be filled with alien pods.

Siegel uses a variety of techniques to effectively show the headlong fall into the nightmarish and bizarre world of the alien invasion. These techniques contrast sharply with the realist techniques used during the daytime world of rationality. In this nightmarish reality, Siegel's camera tracks the nightmarish world through shots down tight, enclosed, and claustrophobic corridors, and shows strangely tilted angles. Both techniques serve to create a feeling of displacement and oddity. Siegel shows silhouettes running against the light of a streetlight, symbolically running from an unknown terror, and seeking light and rationality only to be dragged deeper into the nightmarish dark.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing shots is up through planks underneath Wynter and McCarthy's hiding place as the pod people rationally and calmly tell them that there is nothing to fear. It is the discrepancy between the seeming rationality of the argument, and the distorted shot of Wynter and McCarthy in hiding that illustrates the irrationality, fear, and darkness that hide under the appearance of normalcy.

Similarly, a shot of the public square helps to illustrate the creeping of the nightmare into the world of light and rationality. The shot shows a wide angle of the public square that is taken through an office window, and shows the square almost in its entirety. All appears normal as people go about their everyday business, until visitors are cleared and the square becomes eerily quiet, and then mechanistic and ordered as the pod people use the square as a distribution point for delivering pods all over the country. Symbolically, here the nightmare invades much more than an individual reality; it becomes a public and nationwide menace that suddenly threatens all of humanity.

Siegel allows no one to be spared the insidious, creeping infringement on reality. He shows a shot of eavesdropping on a seemingly happy young married couple with a baby reveals the terror underneath the facade of normalcy. On the surface, the parents seem to be discussing the baby's welfare, by asking quietly if the child has fallen asleep. The horror of the reality appears in the veiled answer that she will be asleep soon, and that there "will be no more tears." What once would have been an innocuous, normal conversation has been turned by circumstance into a horrific discussion about the transformation of an innocent life by evil. Siegel's decision to show this scene through eavesdropping only heightens the horror, as the viewer realized that they are hearing something not designed to terrify or disturb. Instead, they are simply hearing the how the nightmarish world had become the new reality.

Even more techniques contrast sharply with the realist techniques used earlier in the film's rational, daylight moments. Earlier in the movie, McCarthy and Wynter are shown in straight-on shots that highlight the realism and logic of the moment. At the end of the movie, Wynter pulls McCarthy close to him for a slow kiss, a moment of sanity and connection and normalcy in the nightmarish world of the invasion. As Siegel's camera pulls slowly into a disturbingly close shot of McCarthy's face, her black, expressionless eyes reveal that she has been taken over by the invaders.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is really a movie about the darkness that hides just under the surface of a seemingly innocuous ideal of what is normal and desirable. As the movie progresses, the idyllic small-town life of Santa Mira is shattered by the horror and evil that hide just under its surface. Even more disturbing is the ease with which this evil invades their lives - it is almost as if the evil and nightmare are the true reality, while the appearance of normalcy is the illusion.

In the movie, the figures that fight the aliens seem to be fighting to restore morality and individuality as much as they are fighting against the alien invasion. They are fighting a nameless, faceless threat against their humanity. Wynter notes of their humanity, "In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind...All of us - a little bit - we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear."

In the movie, the clearly overt threat to humanity is the invasion of the body snatchers, who replace emotional, flawed humans with their emotionless, unfeeling counterparts. It is interesting that in the movie, it is the rational, less emotional context of daytime that is depicted as normal and therefore shown in the tradition of realistic techniques. In contrast, the horribly emotional, messy, nightmarish world of the nighttime is shown in techniques that are in dramatic contrast to the realism of the daytime sequences. It is almost as if director Siegel wants the viewer to see that the daytime world of rationality and logic is simply a thin veneer over an emotional, messy core that is symbolized by a nighttime world of shadows. Ultimately, it may be this night time world of suppressed emotion and uncontrolled thought that defines our true humanity.

It is telling that the pod people take over the humans as they sleep, when the humans are at their most vulnerable. In their dreams and nightmares, people can be argued to be at their most humane and emotional, without the cover of their cold, rational selves to explain away their desires and emotions. In stripping away humanity in their unconscious state, the aliens reveal when humans are at their most deeply human - when they are most at touch with their emotions and desires. It is in this sometimes nightmarish world of shadow that humanity is the most vulnerable.

Ironically, Siegel seems to argue that it is the nightmarish world of shadow and darkness that houses what is the most valuable and true to human nature. He uses realistic techniques like eye-level shots and undistorted angles to showcase the waking, logical world that is paradoxically more devoid of true humanity than the nightmarish world that he depicts with distorted shots and odd camera angles. In the daytime, all appears rational and normal, and the characters can explain away their loss of humanity with relative ease. At night, in the time of shadow and distortion, humanity is revealed at its messiest and most emotional, and horror cannot be explained away by logic.

It is only as this humanity is threatened by the alien invasion that the distortions of the nighttime begin to paradoxically appear in the daytime as well. As the very basis of humanity is threatened, and emotion and love are replaced by logic and a lack of emotion, that the main characters bring their need for emotion and true humanity into the light of day. It is as their true humanity is threatened that the characters allow their emotion and subconscious fears and desires to be seen in the daytime. Here, realistic techniques previously used in the daytime are replaced by bizarre camera angles, and disturbing close-ups, revealing the emotional and unconscious self in what used to be the realm of logic.

In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the darker side of human behavior is not seen through spectacular violence, brutal aggression or sexual deviance that often characterized aliens in other movies of the science fiction genre. Unlike movies like Alien, Men in Black, or even Independence Day, no deaths or violence are clearly shown in the movie. The aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers are sub-human in their lack of emotion and feeling, rather than in the excessive violence and aggression displayed by aliens in many other science fiction movies. The darker side of human behavior is seen in the slow, insidious loss of humanity that is characterized by a growing coldness, and lack of empathy and feeling. Here, the alien threat simply represents the darker side of human nature that is characterized by a loss of humanity and empathy.