The War of the Worlds (1953)

The crew adjusts one of the war machines that is hanging over the fabulously detailed and realistic miniature set of mountains in the background and a forest and clearing in the foreground.

H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel had Martians fall to earth in huge hollow meteors with the intention of colonizing the earth through the devastating power of their awesome war machines. The book does not have a plot per se as it is a series of connected war-time incidents. Despite every human effort to fight the Martians, when guns and shells and armies and navies prove impotent, when all seems irrevocably lost, the invaders all die virtually overnight because they had not thought to protect themselves from ordinary terrestrial germs. The 1953 movie has largely the same sequence of events, but they are ordered in a more coherent plot rather than the book’s string of episodes. Other differences are that the locale was changed from Britain in 1898 to Southern California in 1953, the machines’ tripod legs have been replaced with electric beams, and the novel’s nameless protagonist is changed from an inhabitant of the town of Woking, England, looking for his wife to a nuclear scientist searching for the attractive young woman who befriended him only the day before, at the outset of the catastrophe.

In the bottom left corner of this lobby card is the autograph of George Pal (who was my hero for the longest time!): "Best wishes to Tom. George Pal.". I provided the lobby card and he signed it for me during the one time I met him when I accompanied a friend who interviewed Pal in the filmmaker’s home while writing a book.

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I’ve watched George Pal’s 1953 production of The War of the Worlds many times—perhaps dozens, at least half a dozen in theaters—and each time I think to myself that I am fortunate, as I’m in the presence of that rarity of rarities—a perfect movie. It is a model of economy. Not one shot is extraneous. There is no padding. The movie opens like gangbusters, and then, from first shot to last, the story builds headlong momentum until the colorful and ironic deus ex machina conclusion. The lavish Technicolor special visual effects were lovingly conceived and perfectly executed by the absolute master in the field. When I say “economy,” I mean as opposed to more recent films that seem intentionally padded, often by as much as 30 minutes or more. For example, as far as I can tell, nearly every summer tent-pole franchise blockbuster of recent years has unnecessarily elongated scenes (though, happily, there a few exceptions).

And when I say above “first shot to last,” I mean from the first frame of film.  To see what I mean, please see the separate post of this blog titled  The Title Sequence of The War of the Worlds (1953)

Within a few minutes after the start of the movie, Dr. Clayton Forrester meets Sylvia Van Buren at the edge of the steaming crater formed by a huge meteorite. Due to the excitement caused by the meteor strike and the fact that the town nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains is a very small community, where everybody knows everybody, and, indeed, where a forest ranger can and does double as a square dance caller, the two “hit it off.” Their relationship never seems strained or artificial. It always seems authentic in the sense that they were thrown together by a catastrophe and shared and survived horrible events, and they simply feel comfortable with one another, as neither has any other like-minded soul to lean on at that moment.

Here, Silvia and Clayton meet (left), later to be thrown into an abyss of horror with only one another to depend on (center), and later, after being separated, with Los Angeles burning and in ruins, Clayton searches for Sylvia, finding her in a church (right).

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

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Silvia is living in a small town where she knows everybody; she is intelligent and well-educated (probably the best educated person in the town) but unworldly in some ways. He is a self-absorbed scientist whose picture had been on the cover of Time magazine. They meet and at that same moment the world crashes down around them. Me? I agree with Bill Warren, who in both editions of his Keep Watching the Skies!, says, “I like the idea [of Clayton and Sylvia], very much. It humanizes the characters and increases the feeling of desperation important to the story."

The visible wires holding up the war machine.

Each of the three Martian war machine models shown in 1953’s The War of the Worlds was 42-inches across, but so heavy and complicated and filled with all sorts of special effects equipment that they each had to be supported by fifteen piano wires and electric cables connecting to overhead tracks on the studio ceiling. The technical and optical technicians who collaborated to make The War of the Worlds, primarily the director Byron Haskin (one-time special visual effects department head for Warner Bros.) and Gordon Jennings, the supervisor of Paramount Pictures special visual effects, were well aware that the fifteen wires holding up each of the three Martian war machines would be clearly visible under normal lighting conditions if the film was to be black and white.  

For example, in his black-and-white Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). which involved a multitude of objects moving through the air or falling with the aid of wires, Ray Harryhausen solved this problem by painting out each little bit of wire that appeared as he painstakingly moved his stop-motion models one or two frames at a time. Well in fact, Steve Rubin, in his ground-breaking Cinefantastique making-of "The War of the Worlds" article, quotes Wallace Kelly (effects cameraman) saying, “Naturally, you had to camouflage the wires so they don’t pick up on camera. You simply paint them so they will blend into the background.” Thus, this base was clearly covered during shooting. But this was not the final optimal solution, and could only be minimally effective in a complex color film like The War of the Worlds. The real solution lay elsewhere, and the many top effects experts on the job put their heads together and came up with the solution to create the illusion that the Martian war machines did truly hover effortlessly over the terrain and streets.

For his black-and-white Earth vs. the Flying

Saucers (1956). Ray Harryhausen needed to

animate multiple flying saucers moving

through the air and the falling masonry of

several of Washington, DC’s iconic structures.

He attached wires to everything that would

fly or fall. The wires hung from a stable

support out of the camera range. Then he

would painstakingly move the diving, turning

and crashing saucers and all the falling debris

one frame at a time. In order for the camera not

to see the wires, Harryhausen painted all

the myriad wires whatever the background

color was during each frame of animation.

As you will see later on, it's important to understand how those Academy-Award winning effects were created, specifically how the wires holding up the Martian war machines were removed from the finished film. 1953 was a long time ago, and information about something as obscure as 65-year-old visual effects techniques is not necessarily readily at hand. During my research to determine what exactly the “trick” was that obscured the wires, I contacted 50s sci-fi film expert Bill Warren, 50s film-restorer Wade Williams, and The War of the Worlds authority Justin Humphreys, as well as conducting an Internet search.

So let’s hop in our time machine and travel back to 1952-53. If we conferred with the cinematographer, with the head of effects, the director, and producer George Pal, we would learn that, unlike today, 3-strip Technicolor was the color film stock of choice for major motion pictures because it produced gorgeous very saturated colors (see Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Black Narcissus, Singin’ in the Rain, and Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea).  However, due to the simple fact that the Technicolor process required for every single inch of the finished film three separate strips of film (literally, one strip for each critical color), and that those three strips needed to be perfectly synchronized, and also due to the insanely complex several-step exposure and Technicolor dye-transfer process, the final film, while gorgeous, would be less than optimally clear, that is to say, its image resolution would be somewhat reduced. Your average film-goer would never notice this, of course.

Simplified schematic of the 3-strip Technicolor process from camera to negatives to final film. Though, for commercial reasons, the use of 3-strip Technicolor was common from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, it was nonetheless a difficult and complicated system. According to Smithsonian.com “Making a Technicolor feature film was such a complex undertaking that movie studios were required to hire specially trained Technicolor staff to oversee production. These included color consultants.”

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But it was a God-send for the special visual effects crew of The War of the Worlds. This resolution reduction would, in effect, blur the hyper-thin piano wires just enough so that they would not be visible in the final film! Yes, miracle of miracles, special visual effects expert Gordon Jennings and his handy staff were able to magically remove the wires.

Yet, none of this is especially obvious to either those poor souls who don't have ready access to a time machine, or to those other deprived souls who've never had a chance to see The War of the Worlds 65 years ago when it was originally presented in the intended manner.
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The Martian war machines for the 1953 The War of the Worlds were designed by Paramount Art Director Al Nozaki, who was inspired by the sleek but eerie appearances of both the manta ray and the cobra’s head. Director of Special Effects Gordon Jennings had three large-size models built of copper and roughly 42-inches wide. The fiery blasts were produced with a welding torch and the green disintegration rays were cartoon animation, both optically printed onto the scenes. According to George Pal, 70 percent of the picture’s budget was spent on the effects, which filled more than half the film. The effects won an Academy Award, but, sadly, Jennings died before he could accept the award.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

An excellent trailer for The War of the Worlds (YouTube.com)

The obligatory tie-in pocketbook.

So instead of all audiences being able to enjoy the unsullied movies throughout the decades, in the late 1960s, for reasons of both economy and ease of handling, The War of the World prints were commonly struck (that is, copied) onto the one-strip industrial strength Eastman Color film stock, which was much, much easier to use than Technicolor.  However, Eastman Color had almost no blurring effect and also tended to be brighter with higher resolution than the Technicolor prints. As a result the carefully hidden wires of the 1950s version of the movie suddenly popped into plain sight, so that some late 60s theater audiences laughed out loud. To make matters worse, transferring the Eastman Color prints onto Laserdisc and DVD only accentuated the problem due the discs’ inherent higher-resolution. 
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As a result, severe criticism of the visible wires has been for 50 years, and still is, commonplace amongst the critical community today, none of whom, as far as I'm able to find, indicate any awareness that the wires were not visible during the original showings in the 50s. Neither do any indicate any understanding of the change in technology that has resulted in the wires becoming increasingly visible. And they seem hopelessly ignorant that due to progressive transferals of the film onto newer and newer media with no attempt whatsoever to minimize or solve this problem, the wires are clear as crystal on recent DVDs. To make 100% clear my assertions about the critical community being oblivious to the pristine nature of the original film, and how the careless transfers onto a different stock basically wrecked the film—with no professional paying any apparent attention!—I copy below some real quotes from real professional reviewers (and, frankly, it is very hard to align the sheer volume and degree of scorn represented here with any sort of reality). Every one of these respected critics ought to have known from the get-go, without having to be told, that the wires were never visible in the original presentations of this crown-jewel film. Instead, too many have persistently and tediously complained about a nonexistent deficiency:

• Leonard Maltin’s Family Film Guide: “Kids are likely to smirk at some of the special effects (as when the wires holding up the war machines are visible).”

• John Brosnan’s Future Tense: “Unfortunately these wires are often visible on the screen, particularly during the sequence when the war machines first emerge from their crater and engage the army in battle.”

• Phil Hardy’s The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction: “Not all Jennings’ spectacular special effects work well—on their first appearance the Martian war machines have an obvious network of wires surrounding them.”

• John Clute’s and Peter Nicholls’ The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: “The wires holding up the machines are too often visible.”

• Gary Gerani’s Top 100 Sci-Fi Movies: “While those cables holding up the machines are painfully visible, viewers tend to cut pre-digital fx a good deal of slack.”

• C.J Henderson’s The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies: From 1897 to the Present : “Wells’ unique walking tripods are replaced by ordinary spaceship-like designs that move on beams of light. This wouldn’t be so bad if the wires holding them up weren’t visible in many scenes.” (By the way, Mr. Henderson, there is nothing “ordinary” about the manta ray/cobra design of the war machines; these are some of the most unusual yet elegant and beautifully conceived alien machines ever filmed.)

• John Clute’s The Science Fiction Encyclopedia: “The first appearance of the war machines, after an impressive build-up of suspense, is spoilt by the obvious maze of wires supporting each one.”

• Time, Inc.’s Special magazine publication, LIFE—Science Fiction: 100 Years of Great Movies, Vol. 16, No. 9, June 24, 2016: “The movie cost $2 million, and its $1.4 million worth of special effects remains, despite visible wires, impressive even in an age of CGI.”

• Barry Forshaw’s The War of the Worlds (BFI): “[I]t has to do be said that [the use of wires] is one of the most dated elements of the special-effects, as they are all too clearly visible in many sequences of the film.... In British showings of the film (when it was re-released in a curious late-1960s US/UK double bill with Hitchcock’s Psycho [1960]), the more sophisticated audiences of the day chuckled at these antediluvian special-effects.” Note that these British audiences just mentioned happened to catch the movie just at the time when the wires began to be made visible when the first Eastman Color prints of the film were struck in the 1960s.

Here are two reviews by critics who clearly saw and remembered the original Technicolor prints of The War of the Worlds in theaters:

British film authority John Baxter in his truly ground-breaking and universally acclaimed 1970 volume, Science Fiction in the Cinema, does in fact take many predicable potshots at elements of 1953’s The War of the Worlds, yet he also says, “Colorful, cleverly worked out, [The War of the Worlds] ... marked the beginning of a durable collaboration between Pal and director Haskin....Together they have made a series of sf films which for the literal depiction of the fantastic, are hard to fault. No stylist, Haskin brings to his films a stolid realism which is ideally suited to his stories of space exploration and alien worlds. In his hands, the already impeccable special-effects seem even more real.” 
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In addition, John Stanley said in his Creature Features: The Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Movie Guide, “George Pal’s commendable version of H.G. Wells novel of a Martian invasion— imaginatively depicted in the Oscar winning effects of Gordon Jennings ... unfolds with such compelling swiftness and breathless action that the invasion takes on epic proportions ... the opening prologue is beautifully rendered.... One of the few sci-fi classics of the cinema.

HOWEVER, all that said and done, by 2018 somebody in power FINALLY, miraculously—FINALLY, PRAISE GOD!—restored the film to original 1953 quality!—in UHR 4K even! Be still my heart! Practically speaking, then, this means, the five paragraphs above ARE pretty much MOOT. It only took 50 YEARS, but somebody FINALLY noticed that this priceless crown jewel of a film had severe problems through no fault of its own, and decided to do something about it!

Visual effects expert Robert Skotak, says, “Some theaters in L.A. and New York projected The War of the Worlds at 1.85:1 
with the proper 1.85:1 mask. The ads in newspapers featured the words ‘in widescreen.’” 
This was during the era of CinemaScope and the like.

The War of the Worlds (1953)

USA. Paramount Pictures. Color by Technicolor. Three-channel stereo. 1.37:1/1.85:1. 85m.

CREW: Director Byron Haskin. Producer George Pal. Script Barré Lyndon. Based on the Novel By H.G. Wells. Score Leith Stevens. Assistant Director Michael D. Moore. Director of Photography George Barnes. Technicolor Color Consultant Monroe W. Burbank. Art Directors Albert Nozaki, Hal Pereira. Associate Producer Frank Freeman, Jr. Astronomical Art Chesley Bonestell. Sound Effects Gene Garvin, Harry Lindgren. Special Photographic Effects Gordon Jennings, Wallace Kelley, Paul Lerpae, Ivyl Burks, Jan Domela, Irmin Roberts. Costumes Edith Head. Editor Everett Douglas. Sets Decorators Sam Comer, Emile Kuri.

CAST: Narrators Paul Frees, Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Clayton Forrester Gene Barry. Sylvia Van Buren Ann Robinson. General Mann Les Tremayne. Dr. Pryor Robert Cornthwaite. Dr. Bilderbeck Sandro Giglio. Reverand Collins Lewis Martin.

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