1954
DIRECTOR: ISHIRÔ HONDA PRODUCER: TOMOYUKI TANAKA SCREENPLAY: TAKEO MURATA AND ISHIRÔ HONDA, BASED ON A STORY BY SHIGERU KAYAMA STARRING: AKIRA TAKARADA (HIDETO OGATA), MOMOKO KÔCHI (EMIKO YAMANE), AKIHIKO HIRATA (DAISUKE SERIZAWA-HAKASE), TAKASHI SHIMURA (KYOHEI YAMANE-HAKASE), FUYUKI MURAKAMI (PROFESSOR TANABE), SACHIO SAKAI (NEWSPAPER REPORTER HAGIWARA)
Gojira (Godzilla)
TOHO FILM CO. (JAPAN) • BLACK & WHITE, 96 MINUTES
When a giant prehistoric lizard is awakened by atom-bomb testing, a scientist and his fiancée must employ a secret weapon to stop the beast before it destroys Japan.
Say the name “Godzilla” to many people in the Western world, and they probably picture an actor in a lizard costume stomping on a miniature city of Tokyo. In fact, the original 1954 Japanese film is an expertly crafted and surprisingly poignant monster movie in which the monster is as much a victim of atomic warfare as the hapless bystanders he crushes.
Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka dreamed up Gojira—known to much of the world as Godzilla—as an answer to Hollywood’s trend of creature features, particularly The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, about a thawed Jurassic-era dinosaur who ravages New York City. Tanaka also took his inspiration from the real-life devastation of the 1945 atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It had only been nine years since the mass destruction, so imagining a radioactive monster with the power to annihilate cities was all too easy for anyone in postwar Japan. When Tanaka’s idea was realized by Toho Motion Picture Company, the kaiju (or giant monster) film officially arrived in Japan, and has since become a staple of Japanese cinema.
The director, World War II veteran Ishirô Honda, infused Japan’s first monster movie with his pacifist beliefs. Making a film that directly addressed the atom bombings or condemned war in a literal sense would have been unthinkable in the political climate of the 1950s, so Honda, Tanaka, and screenwriter Takeo Murata used a grotesque giant to symbolize the horrors of war. Honda simply “took the characteristics of an atomic bomb,” he said, “and applied them to Godzilla.” The creature—a dormant prehistoric relic brought to life by radiation from the bomb—indiscriminately lays waste to everything in its path.
Though time and budget for special effects were limited, the filmmakers used the not-entirely-convincing puppets and foam-rubber suits to their best advantage. Rarely has a hand puppet been more effective than in the scene where Godzilla makes his first appearance, roaring over a hillside as villagers flee in a state of sheer panic. Until that moment, we only hear growls and ominous thudding footsteps, and see death and destruction caused by a massive unknown force. These images—along with the sequence showing children in the hospital orphaned by Godzilla’s rampages—are among the film’s most powerful.
For a monster movie, Gojira invests deeply in its human characters. Those who understand and attempt to defeat Godzilla include the respected Dr. Yamane, his daughter, Emiko, military officer Ogata, and the tortured scientist Dr. Serizawa. Serizawa, portrayed by kaiju regular Akihiko Hirata, is young and intense, burdened by his accidental discovery of a substance “as powerful as a nuclear bomb.” Like Godzilla, he is scarred by radiation (his face is burned and he wears a patch over one eye), and ultimately realizes that only he has the power to destroy the monster.
Unlike most typical American films where Marines are enlisted to fight a towering mutant, the characters in Gojira are not action heroes. They represent a cross section of average Japanese society whose heroics “are the moral and ethical choices they make,” Godzilla expert Steve Ryfle has noted, “rather than firing a bazooka or flying a fighter-plane.” Though violence abounds, Honda balances the action scenes with tense silences and hushed conversations occasionally broken by Akira Ifukube’s striking, less-is-more musical score. The overall tone is at once horrifying, unsettling, and sad.
Gojira was a box-office smash in Japan, but the rest of the world was oblivious until American producer Edmund Goldman got hold of the film in 1955. Sensing that he had a potential moneymaker on his hands, he enlisted director Terry Morse to make the movie palatable to the U.S. market. Character actor Raymond Burr was cast in several newly shot scenes that were carefully edited into the original. Taking a foreign film and inserting new scenes in English was an unusual move for Hollywood—and it makes for an unusual film. The 1956 American-release version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, is a surreal concoction of Godzilla destroying Japan while Burr’s American reporter looks on, narrating the action. The film’s poetry and its antiwar message are largely lost in the translation.
The monster’s rampage
A surprise hit in America and Europe, Morse’s revamped version launched the world’s fascination with Godzilla. Neither audiences nor critics seemed to notice the clever handiwork. Variety admitted that the film “more than taxes the imagination,” but praised its “striking realism” and “startling special effects.” Americans only had access to the Raymond Burr version until 2004, when the Japanese original was finally released around the world, and lauded as an unsung science-fiction classic. Godzilla’s legacy of over thirty sequels and remakes has cemented his reputation as King of the Monsters.
FAR-OUT FACTS
MIND-BLOWING MOMENT
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