Reaction Paper  - The Fly (1958)

I have to say that this movie so far had one of the most unusual plots I ever saw—and it kept me watching intently, too curious to know what happens next. The film entertained me and grossed me out at the same time. Imagine what I felt when it immediately started with a man squished dead with a hydraulic press! Seeing Helene admitting the murder of her husband with a straight face, then later going hysterical for a slapped fly left me at first too dumb to make sense out of the movie but as the movie went on, everything gradually became clear.

Andre was a brilliant scientist for having developed a machine that makes atoms of matter disintegrate in one glass case and have it reassembled in another. It’s amazing how the filmmakers thought of this as early as 1958—they also thought of a situation when such a seemingly perfect invention can go ugly.

The movie is a morality play. It showed that no matter how great a breakthrough Andre's invention was, the film's opinion was expressed through Helene, when she told her husband to be "playing God" by using living things for experiment. And the film certainly showed the limitation of a human being by letting Andre's atoms get awfully mixed up with fly atoms.

When I thought some more about the idea of teleportation during the 1950s, I suddenly felt as if we owe them an explanation for still not turning this into reality after so many decades. How high their expectations must be if they once thought that it would only be a matter of time before we go from one place to another in the blink of an eye!

Science and Technology continues to grow and accumulate knowledge. We never know when the real teleporter gets invented. Though it’s not bad to discover and push for progress, the movie reminds us never to cross the line.