Silver Screen Standards: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Many remakes have followed in the wake of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the iconic science fiction film adapted from a serialized novel by American sci-fi writer Jack Finney, but the first outing for this terrifying tale of soulless pod people remains the most multi-faceted, with even author Finney and director Don Siegel offering different interpretations of the picture’s message. The later movies, with varying degrees of fidelity to the source material, lean into the science fiction and horror elements of the story, but the original adaptation is compelling partly because of its extensive use of the tropes and style of classic film noir. While I’m not the first person to note the importance of noir style to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I think it’s worth discussing at some length because the classic noir themes add so much to this film and help it to remain relevant and thought-provoking for viewers today, nearly 70 years after its theatrical release.
The plot of the picture follows the spiraling experience of Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), a doctor in the small California town of Santa Mira who returns from a conference to find strange problems troubling his patients and friends. At first, Miles dismisses the complaints as psychological in nature, but he soon comes to realize that the townspeople really are changing into perfect but not quite human copies of themselves. Along with his friends, Jack and Teddy (King Donovan and Carolyn Jones) and his love interest, Becky (Dana Wynter), Miles tries to escape the clutches of the transformed pod people and alert the outside world to the danger humanity faces, but time is of the essence because the changelings take control once their victims fall asleep.
Throughout the movie, the cinematic and narrative conventions of noir rachet up the tension the audience feels. Miles is a doctor, not a detective, but he functions as the clue-finding protagonist struggling to uncover a murderous, sinister plot before it’s too late. His efforts also make him a man on the run from the law because the aliens have already replaced the local police. The scenes of pursuit that ensue employ the same camera angles and visual vocabulary seen in many classic noir films; we watch Miles and Becky drive, run, and hide with increasing desperation as the changelings close in on them. Their exhaustion and panic are palpable, with their faces framed in lights and shadows that highlight their emotions.
On my most recent viewing, these elements called to mind noir classics like The Third Man (1949), Night and the City (1950), and even the influential proto-noir, M (1931). The wraparound scenes, which were added later and against Siegel’s wishes, might offer the audience more hope than the original ending, with Miles vainly shouting on the freeway, but they also contribute to the noir sensibility of the whole. Miles doesn’t start the movie already dead or dying, as we see in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and D.O.A. (1950), but, as he recounts his story to the authorities, we feel increasingly unsure about the way the final scene will unfold. Like Larry Ballentine (Robert Young) in They Won’t Believe Me (1947), Miles has no reason to think his account will convince others, but there’s a very good chance that the pod people have already replaced the doctors and policemen in the room. The ending is less grim than Siegel originally wanted, but it’s still a tense place to leave a story, with the world in immediate danger and no guarantee that the audience won’t go home to find their loved ones strangely different than they were before.
Finney, Seigel, McCarthy, and others have debated the movie’s message over the years following its release, with some arguing that it depicts the dangers of McCarthyism, others reading it as an anti-Communist metaphor, and Seigel insisting that it portrayed a more general loss of humanity. The noir elements of the movie allow each of these claims to have their merits, but they also permit a modern reading of the narrative about the ways in which our increasingly diverse American society is being violently suppressed in favor of enforced conformity and homogeneity. Post-war noir questioned the shiny surface and middle-class values of American culture, which left no room for drifters, losers, outcasts, dreamers, or anyone else who didn’t fall into line politically, culturally, racially, or sexually. It took us into the dark corners of a corrupt, capitalist culture where fat cats ruled and little guys were always already doomed, no matter how much they struggled against the machinery of the system. Invasion of the Body Snatchers argues that forced conformity to a rigid social structure deprives individuals of everything that matters about them; they lose their emotions and capacity for empathy, what some might call their very souls. As citizens succumb to the insidious forces that transform them into pod people, they turn on their neighbors, their friends, even their once beloved family members. Outwardly they seem like the same people, but less human than before. It’s a terrifying prospect, whether we watch it unfold in 1950s Santa Mira or in our own hometowns today.
The 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers was most notably remade in 1978 with a cast that includes Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, and Leonard Nimoy (Kevin McCarthy has a great cameo, and Don Siegel also makes a brief appearance). Body Snatchers (1993), The Invasion (2007), and Assimilate (2019) all owe their origins to Finney’s source material and the influence of the original film, as does the very funny 2013 Edgar Wright comedy, The World’s End. Other science fiction films that explore enforced conformity include THX 1138 (1971), The Stepford Wives (1975), and They Live (1988). If you’re interested in the fertile intermingling of science fiction and film noir, have a look at Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Alphaville (1965), Soylent Green (1973), Blade Runner (1982), Dark City (1998), and Minority Report (2002).
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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub
Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.
Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.
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