Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Introductions- ( 1 min. )

Episode Goals- ( 30 sec. )

Narrative summary-  ( 2-3 min. )

Cultural and Historical background- ( 12-20 min. )

Production context- ( 8-10 min. )

Close readings-  ( 5 min. each x4 )

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SCRIPT  

Introductions: 

Hi! We are group one and the movie that we will be analyzing for this episode and the next is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, released in 1956 and directed by Don Siegel. 

Our group members include Mia Fisher, Maxwell Jurgensen, Bella Davies, and Maggie Nixon. 

**as well as pre recordings taken from the introduce yourself exercise**

 

Episode Goals – ( 30 sec. )

Our goal for this episode is to talk about the cultural and historical context of the film’s national cinema, briefly describe the development of that nation’s film industry and style, and provide a summary and explanation of the pandemic being explored.Then, each of us will share an individual close reading of a how a scene of our choice reflects the films film’s cultural and historical context.

Narrative summary –  ( 2-3 min. )

The 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel, takes a close look into a small town named Santa Mira where doctor and confidant to many, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), seems to have been struck down with a case of hysteria. The film starts with Dr. Bennell telling the story of what happened to him, to make him end up admitted to a mental hospital and in a room to be interviewed by police and a psychiatrist. It all started when his patients approached him with concerns that their loved ones seem to have been replaced by emotionless impostors. A son didn’t think his mom was his mom and a woman didn’t think her uncle was her uncle. Due to the outlandish nature of their accusations others dismiss them but Dr. Miles Bennell and former girlfriend Becky (Dana Wynter) have reason to believe that they are telling the truth after friends Jack and Nancy find a body that resembles Jack but is not him at all.  After further investigation Dr. Bennell finds plant like pods that births human look alikes and they take over people’s bodies when they sleep. Both Becky, Dr. Bennell, Jack, and Nancy do their best to warn people but Jack and Nancy end up falling prey to the alien species. At this point everyone in the town has been taken over by the aliens and they are now trying to take over the World. The aliens have to get Becky and Miles to fall asleep so that their minds and bodies will too be taken over. But will their efforts be enough? Can they stay awake for long enough? The answer is no, or at least Becky couldn’t. Dr. Bennell runs hysterically in the streat to warn everyone that their minds are at risk. The movie returns back to the psychiatric office where Bennell finishes telling his story. The doctors and investigator don’t know what to believe at first until a patient is brought in that was said to have been found buried under hundreds of plant like pods. He finally is able to convince them, takes a sigh of relief and then the movie ends. The pandemic that the movie is portraying is described by one of the characters as “an epidemic of hysteria” but really the infestation of these plant life pods. This movie is a good example of how one person’s hysteria is easily transferable resulting in mass hysteria.  

Cultural and Historical background – ( 12-20 min. )

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an American science fiction horror film produced by Walter Wanger and directed in 1956 by Don Siegel. 

Starting with the kind of film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is grouped under, This 1950s film combines the genres of both science fiction as well as well as horror, into a specific and unique genre that portrays both the emotional and psychological effects that are induced due to the combination and intersectionality of the genres into what we call, American science fiction horror films. More so, the terror and pandemonium that these films produce is a direct result of the complex plot. That is common in these sort of films, often times dealing with the a lack of control over scientific Exploration As well as illustrating humans innate fear of the unknown. 

As for the background behind the screenplay, and Don Sigel’s inspiration for the film, Daniel Mainwaring actually adapted this 1956 screenplay from Jack Finney’s 1954 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers. This science fiction novel was released in 1955, by American writer Jack Finney, And was originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954. The novel denotes a similar story taking Place in Mill Valley, California, the town in which Jack Finney grew up, however this town is referred to in the film by the fictional name of “Santa Mira”.    

American life in the 1950s was complex yet conventional for the common citizen. With Dwight D Eisenhower as president, life in the United States during the 1950’s was a time dominated by international war, a rise in capitalism and consumerism. Not to mention the civil rights movement, and an increasingly growing popularity in cinema. With celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elisabeth Taylor and Elvis Presley taking over the social scene, the 1950’s was an extremely dynamic time for American citizens, discovering their place in the world, and for many, their place in society and the household, two concepts that Understandably compliment the character relationships in the film. 

One of the most popular products in the 1950s was the TV, which when paired with the complexities that accompanied a consumerism lifestyle, left many American’s with a growing interest in cinema. Alongside many new cinema techniques and approaches which developed with breakthroughs in technology, many new styles of cinema blossomed during this area. One being the dominant genre of science fiction. Due to the panic and constant fear of international warfare, science was slowly brought into the entertainment scene as a topic American’s just could not escape from, this was then developed even further into the genre of science fiction, which played on the imaginations and creativity of directors as they pulled elements from space and mysteries and created a new genre with no limits. Another trend that was becoming increasingly popular in the film sector was paralleling issues and concerns of the present day and then exaggerating them to the point of fiction. One example of this was by focusing on the concept of suburbia and following the American dream of conformity and lack of individuality as a middle class. This specific use of citizen conformity is not only associated with American society under Eisenhower’s presidency but also can be blatantly recognized in the film, Invasion of the body snatchers. Regardless of the character conflict, the the storyline itself lends itself to the fear of losing one’s identity and the eeriness of uncertainty. Creating a monster paranoia film that lacks any mythical creatures raises the bar for what can be considered science fiction as Siegel re established that human fear is not restricted to unnatural species but can be accomplished through something as simple as clones. 

Production context– ( 8-10 min. )

Walter Wanger : The producer of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is Walter Wanger. Walter started his career in 1919 at Paramount and eventually working with every major studio of classical Hollywood except for Warner Bros.. 

Budget : 417,000

Box Office: 3 mil

Post production : Name of the film was decided on. Took only 23 days to film

Genre: Sci-fi

Distribution: Allied Artists Pictures

Locations: Bronson, Sierra Madre, and other places outside of Los Angeles that resembled Mill Valley which would make up Santa Mira.

Post production: They hadn’t had decided on a title for the film, but eventually divided on body snatchers

Film was successful in the U.S.- made about 2.5 million and in the U.K. Half a million Critics were skeptical about the film but now people praise the movie

Casting: Wagner considered many other people for the roles of Miles and Becky.

Pandemic and Society (3 min.)

When one thinks of a pandemic, usually they think of disease, which is technically the correct way to think of a pandemic. As Merriam Webster defines it, as an outbreak of disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population. However, in the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, would the pods not constitute a pandemic? After all, even though they’re not technically a disease, they are spread from person to person over a wide geographic area. The town of Santa Maria, California, although measures such as social distancing wouldn’t help very much against the pod people taking over the town. The film still illustrates how easily a disease can spread and evolve into a pandemic if nobody is willing to acknowledge it as dangerous until it’s too late. After all, the pod people weren’t able to take over because the doctors of the town knew they were there, even ignoring our modern pandemic. We can see this kind of behavior being done with pandemics all across the ages. The only reason the Spanish flu was called the Spanish flu is because Spain was the first country to report on it, because they were neutral in World War One, not because they had the first case. In fact, the origins of the 1918 influenza pandemic still aren’t known, although the doctors of Santa Maria, California, are justifiable in their misjudgement of the situation, considering that nobody was physically different. The film still shows what can happen when a pandemic is left to spread. A full 64 years before allegations of certain governments around the world being slow to the punch when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus, invasion of the Body Snatchers echoes both the future and the past when it comes to dealing with pandemics. Perhaps the ability to look both back and forward is indicative of how its creators viewed society’s ability to handle a pandemic. The mentality of downplaying everything is fine until something big happens is prevalent in both society and the film. In the real world, we have ignoring the Spanish flu because it makes you look weak during a war or ignoring the corona virus and calling it just the flu. In the movie world, we have culling the whole pod people situation a pandemic of mass hysteria. The connections between the film showing the downplaying of the pod people pandemic and the real life downplaying of viral pandemics is likely by design rather than coincidence. Everything is fine until it’s convenient to point out that it isn’t in the film. Miles is worried about the reports of people acting strange, but ultimately isn’t convinced enough by it until he sees the pod person lying on his friends table in the real world. People still gather in large crowds to protest social distancing measures or just start ignoring them and throw the party they were planning, thinking that even if anyone does get sick, it won’t be that bad. Likewise, the film also shows how the spread of the pandemic can be mitigated through diligence. Miles is never replaced by a pod person. And that’s because he’s diligent in keeping them away from him and staying awake until the very end. The only difference between Miles trying to stop the spread of a pandemic in his world and us trying to stop the spread of a pandemic and ours is that he has to try to convince people to get rid of those plant pods while in the real world. We have to convince people to wash their hands. A real world virus isn’t the same as a fictional growing group of pod people trying to take over the world. But the danger is still there and the spread is just as easy.

Close readings –  ( 5 min. each x4 )

Bella : Opening scene

The opening scene of any film is arguably one of the most important things to get right when directing a film as it is the first introduction to the characters and themes of the storyline however also establishes a powerful introduction to the tone which will be carried out throughout the film. 

That being said, Invasion of the body snatchers follows a widely used guide to directing any opening scene , as this film starts with none other than a powerful entrance.  A depiction of the protagonist in the midst of a character dilemma or crisis, which off the bat draws the audience in by establishing a connection and places the viewer in this experience as well. 

In this beginning scene the audience first sees police officers approaching a hospital, where a Psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Hill has been called to assist and investigate a screaming man by the name of Miles Bennell who is being held in custody. After Bennell insists that he is not insane or mentally ill and is also a doctor, Dr. Hill agrees to listen to his story and begins sharing the events that lead up to his arrest and arrival at the hospital.

Within this 30 second scene, Don Siegel, the director has not only established a direct and confrontational relationship between the film and the audience however has also displayed his impressive yet intentional production skills, establishing his film as sophisticated yet complex from the very beginning. 

The first character the audience is introduced to is Miles Bennell, or should I say Doctor, Miles Bennell, as he describes his current situation in a panic. However as he is being restrained and the doctors are reluctant to believe that he is intact sane, as he is yelling and screaming, Siegel’s apparent and strategic use of camera angles and differences in audio show the Dr.Hills understanding and patience with Miles Bennell, providing compassion and empathy for the Bennell in this scene before a scene blur which transitions into a flashback of Bennell’s with his narration of the memory. 

This scene already sets the stage for the duration of the film as there is a slight foreshadowing of what is to come, however also provides context  to what has occurred before this moment to this main character.

It creates drama and anticipation as to what has happened prior to this scene and establishes a relationship between the viewer and Miles Bennell by showing that he has experienced a lot and panic and frustration with being misunderstood, two feelings which are very commonly relatable to an everyday viewer of such a film. 

Within the first 2 minutes the audience is already able to establish a clear and relatively well rounded understanding of the character of Miles Bennell, but then his character profile is then quickly altered in the midst of his flashbacks which show the same man in a much more sane state of mind, when he was working as an admirable doctor back in Santa Mira. 

 

Maggie: The ending scene

In my opinion the ending scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was both satisfying and terribly disatifying, which is what made it a good scene. At the beginning of the movie Dr, Bennell was in the Mental hospital telling the story of how his small town, Santa Mira, was infested with an alien human replicating species that looked and sounded like their loved ones but lacked emotion in an unhuman way. The story he is telling continues to be the plot for the rest of the movie. Just before you know it you’re back in the room where they are holding Dr. Miles Bennell. To maintain the temporality of the film and keep the audience aware that Bennell was telling a story the whole time, Bennell would do a voice over. The voice overs offered insight on the situation he was “describing” and reflection on what his current self felt in regards to what he had done. The camera shots and movements in the ending scene helped to portray the wide range of emotions that were seen in the film. The ending scene begins with a miragey, dreamy fade from Bennell screaming “you’re next, you’re next!,” into an extreme close up shot of Dr. Bennell sitting on the couch. The camera remains static as well as the doctor and investigator, this helps to capture the movement of Bennell frantically looking to the left and then to the right. The camera zooms out slightly to show what Bennell is looking at and just enough for the doctor and investigator to be included in the frame. The camera keeps Bennell in the middle of the frame to help capture his frantic movement against a backdrop of static static and/or calm characters. The doctor and investigator are on either side of him, listening intently but have appeared to not be completely convinced. Bennell’s movement helps to convey the panic that he feels in trying to convince them that what he said was true. Though he knows it’s crazy, it’s life or death. I mean when the fate of the world is on your shoulders it’s hard not to feel a sense of urgency. The doctor and investigator look at each other with a shrug and sigh while Bennell is inconsolable in the middle of them with his hands holding up his head. The camera then stays at a fixed position and tilts up to match the movement of the doctor and investigator standing up. In the same fixed position, the camera pans to the left to watch them walk out of the door and shut it. Cut to them outside of the door shutting it. Starting now the camera tracks the characters in order to avoid cuts and to keep the flow of dialogue. This is important because some very significant information is going to be revealed. The camera frames the doctor and investigator at a medium close up where they discuss how helpless and crazy Miles is. Then the camera pans to the left where another doctor enters with a patient on a gurney, talk about Bennell is put on pause when the camera starts to track the two doctors walking and discussing the peculiarities of the case that just came in. A man had run his car through a redlight and got hit by a truck, then he had to be dug out from under the most unusual of things. At this point the shot is set up where the doctor that just came in is in the foreground, the doctor helping Bennell is in the middle ground, the investigator just right behind him, and Bennell in the background. This creates a visual chain of command that the important information follows. With that being said, the conversation goes as follows: “what things?” says the lead investigator as the door to the room where Dr. Bennell is swings open. Everyone is silent waiting for the doctor’s answer, “they looked like great big seed pods.” The investigator asks “where they were coming from” “Santa Mira” says the doctor. The classic “Duh, Duh, Duh” hits as well as a series of fast cuts occur. The doctor looks at the other doctor where his head then turns to look at the investigator, cut to the investigator turning his head to look back at exhausted Bennell. This helped to further the sense of urgency that was originally felt by Bennell and is now transferred to everyone else. The camera follows the investigator to the policemen where he gives them orders, then the camera pans to follow the policemen walking out. The camera catches Bennell at a medium close up shot of him against the wall, beaten down. While you can hear the investigator in the background making phone calls and barking orders, a tremendous amount of responsibility is falling off of his shoulders and he is finally able to breathe. “The End” appears on the screen and it fades to black. The whole movie followed Bennell trying to warn people of this harmful epidemic that was occurring and it ended with this one moment of relief. The reason I said the movie was unsatisfying was because I was interested in seeing how the pandemic described in the movie would affect the rest of the world. But I guess Santa Mira is a good example of how people react to mass hysteria. The camera shots and movements in the ending scene helped to portray the wide range of emotions that were seen in the film.  

 

Mia: Greenhouse scene 0:40:00-0:47:00.

This scene is the start of the discovery of the pods and the start of the chaos. I think this scene is the turning point in the movie when Miles and the rest realize what is really going on. Panic arises and help is trying to be reached. This scene shows paranoia which I think is a central theme in this film. There were a lot of camera angles used in this scene to show panic and uncertainty like a lot of dutch angles. This film has a lot of political and social aspects to it based on the time it was filmed. There is a lot of speculation that it deals with the real life paranoia of communism spreading because at the time the film was made war was a big concern for a lot of people. There is a lot of conformity and emotionless characters that bring out how similar anti-mccarthy and anti-communism films are. The film kind of created a divide between conservatives and liberals. The conservatives worrying that soviet russia would spread communism to the states and the liberals claimed it was anti-communist. I do not think the film was intended to create that divide in politics and I don’t think it was trying to recreate a historical event. It was based off a book. The film could tell us when it was set that anything could take over society and when it was released which was at the height of the Cold War that fear and paranoia was something that a lot of Americans felt. This film could hold a piece in historical analysis but the director made it clear that the film was for entertainment purposes. 

 

Max : The scene where Miles and Becky are trapped in the Doctor’s Office (0:58:00-1:04:27)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a film that has no real meaning behind it. The creators of the film have said so multiple times in interviews and even the creator of the original book on which the film was based has said so about his work. However just because deeper meaning was never intended doesn’t mean it’s not there. Some of the greatest pieces of art only have the meaning the audience puts behind it. What the author says isn’t what the author always gets across and the same goes for movies. There’s a conflict between reviewers of the film. Some believe that the film has deeper meanings about McCarthyism and the communist witch hunt led by Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Other reviewers see it as an allegory for the loss of personality under communism. Both interpretations of the film are perfectly valid. But for the purposes of my analysis I’m going to stick with the communist one. That is to say the one about communism, not the one about McCarthyism, which would technically be the Communist stance because it’s because McCarthyism is anticommunism but the communist stance would be anti-anti-communist… You know what I’m going on too long about this. The scene that I believe best exemplifies the ideas of losing your personality and your personal identity under a specific system is the one where they outright say that people who get taken over by the pods lose their personal identity and what makes them human in the scene where Miles and Becky are trapped in the doctor’s office.

It’s explicitly told to us that those who are taken over by the pods lose some of their emotion and although they’re good at faking it that lack of emotion is heavily implied to be what sets them apart from human beings and makes them so easy to identify. To people who know them up until this point in the film everyone who had been found out as a pod person was found out by someone who had previously loved them before they got their bodies snatched. Well I guess technically they got their minds snatched the body is a completely different body should be invasion of the mind snatchers instead. The following audio is an excerpt from the film that tells us exactly what we need to know about the pod persons and their overwhelming lack of emotion. 

Tomorrow will I feel the same?

No need for love. No emotion

And you have no feelings, only the instinct to survive. You can’t love or be loved. Am I right. 

You say it as if it were terrible. Believe me it isn’t.

Looking at this film through an anti-communist stance allows us to look at this scene differently instead of a man afraid of some sort of alien he’s afraid of losing himself and losing what he loves or even losing the ability to love in the first place. Those kinds of feelings were a dime a dozen during the Cold War when this film was produced. The whole reason McCarthyism exists and is one of the potential meanings behind this film is because of those feelings that inability to know who to trust that person next to you could be a communist and you didn’t even know it until it was too late and they’ve already swapped you with a different you can’t even love the fear that Dr. Miles goes through during this film is reflective of the fears of everyday Americans. Back during the Cold War this entire scene encapsulates how Americans felt about communism without ever mentioning it even if it wasn’t intended. They did a damn good job. Seconds after the audio clip I played Dr. Miles says that he doesn’t want to live in a world that the pod people are suggesting and the response he gets.

You have no choice.

The ever looming fear that something major is going to happen and the average citizen will have no choice about whether they’re part of it or not was looming over America during the time of the Cold War when this film was made. Communism was what everyone was afraid of. And even if this film wasn’t intended to portray that it portrays it beautifully. Everyone around them is turning into these emotionless creatures that are all a part of the same collective; they’re all treating each other equally and using that equality to spread their word only their word isn’t a choice. There is no option whether or not you get to join this collective you’re either with them or you’re against them. You could apply this fear to a lot of things even to McCarthyism saying that I’m not actually against them they’re just pointing fingers at me and calling me a threat for no reason. Which is also built upon by this scene that I’ve already talked about. In the end even if there was no intended meaning behind the film the meaning that we put behind it can be just as powerful and looking at the film as it is. There’s a lot of different ways that you could go but almost all of them resort back to an in group versus an outgroup.

 

Work Cited: Chicago style  

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Music: Music stylings by Maggie’s boyfriend Avery Haines