An ET visitors' guide to earth.

ORSON WELLES ONCE OBSERVED, "If I had to save only one film in the world, it would be 'Grande Illusion.'" In Welles' later years, Jean Renoir, the director of this 1937 antiwar classic, had become his favorite filmmaker. Still, given the fact that Welles had directed, cowritten, and starred in arguably the most critically acclaimed picture ever made, "Citizen Kane" (1941), his kudos to "Grande Illusion" are all the more impressive. What is most interesting about Welles' statement is not the choice, but rather the notion of saving just one movie.

There once was a professor who assigned his class to write something about life on Earth from the perspective of visitors from another world. The instructor's inspiration had come from a Ray Bradbury short story about a post-apocalyptic Earth. When aliens eventually investigated this cinder of a planet, the only human artifact that remained was a Laurel and Hardy film. Thus, the space explorers somehow had to piece together human history from Stan and Ollie, "two minds without a single thought." It is a funny concept from a watershed writer of science fiction who doubled as a huge fan of the comedy team.

Of course, for the student of the absurd, Laurel and Hardy would be perfect casting. For instance, Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" (first produced in 1952) essentially is an intellectual vaudeville act, a la "Stan and Ollie Play at Existentialism"--and Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz & Guildenstem Are Dead" (initial stage production, 1967, filmed in 1990) might better be subtitled, "Laurel and Hardy Visit 'Hamlet,'"

This saving-one-film idea is not necessarily an exercise in selecting the greatest movie ever made, though one would hope the pick had some seminal cinema status. Thus, forget about a single guilty-pleasure picture for that proverbial desert island. The goal is a quality human showcase for these extraterrestrials; something like "Shack Out on 101" (1955) or "Truck Stop Women" (1974) only would confuse them. (Though, the proposed but never produced sequel for the latter film might have amplified alien interest: "Truck Stop Women on the Moon.")

Being a secular humanist does not mean I want to whitewash the selection process. After all, if battling doomsday devices has reduced the planet to ashes, it would behoove the representative movie to exhibit some aspects of humanity's dark side, but reaching that good-bad balance would be a slippery goal. For example, as much as Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" (1990), Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" (1994), and Shane Black's "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" (2005) are to be admired as three inventive takes on darkly comic crime stories, none of these would be the ideal summation for humankind, unless gangster pictures and film noir detectives are big in other galaxies. (Ever catch the "Star Trek" episode where Capt. Kirk and company visit that gangster planet?)

Naturally, if one really wanted to play to an alien audience, a memorable extraterrestrials-as-good-guys science fiction film might be the ticket. The ideal selection here would be Robert Wise's still timely "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), sort of a space ship-laser version of Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939). Moreover, as in Capra's best populist pictures, the other worldly hero (Michael Rennie) of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is Christ-like, taking the name "Carpenter," preaching peace, dying for his mission, and being brought back to life in order to save us.

Since Welles selected a picture by his favorite director, perhaps we should do the same. Coincidently, this is the film artist most admired by Renoir, too--Charlie Chaplin. Instead of going with the most universally acclaimed Tramp pictures, either "The Gold Rush" (1925) or "City Lights" (1931), the all-of-humanity in one picture selection would be "The Great Dictator" (1941). With Chaplin playing dual roles, a Jewish barber variation of the Tramp and a satirical skewering of Adolph Hitler, the comedian encapsulizes the extremes of the human condition. Plus, given Chaplin's passionately controversial close, where he steps out of character and pleads for world peace, the comedian embraces art's greatest ploy--making sense of life's chaos.

Moreover, using "The Great Dictator" as humanity's one-time capsule film probably also would have worked for Welles, at least after "Grande Illusion." In a March 1967 magazine interview with Kenneth Tynan, what begins as the director's examination of his own contradictions ultimately sounds like a description of "The Great Dictator": "We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a Philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint."

With the Earth destroyed, some might question the merits of saving any single human artifact. Welles' response might be drawn from a 1966 Cahiers du cinema interview, in which he quotes Renoir: "We should remind people that a field of wheat painted by [Vincent] van Gogh can arouse a stronger emotion than a field of wheat in nature."

For Renoir, Welles, and many of us, art can surpass reality. What single representative example would you save?

Wes D. Gehring, Associate Mass Media Editor of USA Today, is professor of film, Ball State University, Muncie, Ind., and the author of several books on cinema.