The original Godzilla is a film unlike any other. It's a film that, through the visage of a classic monster movie, masterfully presented the existential terror of the Cold War, capturing the mood of a people that remain the only ones in history to have seen the reality of nuclear war first-hand. Despite being in black and white and having special effects that are very much a product of their time, it remains one of the most effective and frightening pieces of cinema you can watch, a haunting piece of art that presents it's themes and message confidently and with not a shred of remorse. November 3rd 2024 marks this wonderful film's seventieth anniversary, but unfortunately, my copy of the Criterion 4K release isn't coming until the 11th. Thankfully, I already have Criterion's previous Blu ray release so I can at least try to do this film the justice it deserves, all that being said, let's get started.
Here's what you need to know; nine years after their surrender to the Americans at the end of World War II, a series of unexplained ship disappearances off the Japanese coast has the nation spooked, with the residents of Odo Island believing the culprit to be a massive sea creature called Godzilla. But when stories of the beast turn out to be true, Japan must decide a course of action to deal with the threat before it can come ashore and wreak unimaginable destruction on the struggling nation and its people.
Godzilla opens with a scene of a Japanese ship being destroyed by a blast of radiation from an unseen monster. Right out of the gate, the film makes no attempt to obfuscate it's themes and message, as this scene is a direct reference to a real world event that happened just a few months before, one I've talked about before when discussing Godzilla. On the 1st of March, 1954, the United States detonated it's first thermonuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Castle Bravo test was one of the worst disasters in America's entire nuclear history, as thanks to an unforeseen boost in the efficiency of the bomb's fusion reaction, it went off with a far, far bigger boom than the scientists predicted. The resulting fallout from the test was much worse than they'd expected, and ended up contaminating several populated islands and over a hundred ships in the area. One such ship was the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, the Lucky Dragon No.5, a Japanese fishing boat that had unknowingly wondered too close to the test site. In the following months, all twenty-three of her crew would suffer the effects of their exposure to the fallout from Castle Bravo, one of them would die from the radiation poisoning. This event and the moral panic that it caused in Japan was one of this film's main inspirations, so it's only fitting that the film would open with a ship being destroyed by a radioactive monster. The film spends the next leg of its runtime building up it's characters and story, as the mystery of the disappearing ships slowly swells into a crisis on the mainland.
Elsewhere, on Odo Island, the fishermen start coming back with empty nets, and a village elder becomes convinced that a sea monster is eating all their fish. Godzilla's story is told through several characters and intersecting storylines, and like all good ensemble casts, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Essentially, the various characters of Godzilla exist to represent the different ideas and philosophies that underpin its story. Professor Yamane, for example, is one of the first people to see Godzilla for himself and as a palaeontologist, he sees him as a miracle of nature that must be studied; believing the potential breakthroughs in science and biology that can be gained from studying the monster outweigh the potential risks, as well as seeing the monster as nothing more than a confused animal that should be left alone. On the opposite end of this argument is Ogata, a sailor who understands Yamane's beliefs, but views Godzilla as a serious danger to the people of Japan. In the middle is Emiko, Yamane and Ogata's daughter and lover, respectively, who provides a more emotional outlook on the situation, understanding both sides of the argument, but also understanding the consequences of Godzilla's existence for the people that get in his way. Towards the end of the film, Emiko and her fiancé; Dr Serizawa, completely steal the show as the film drives home its themes to brutal effect, though we'll get to Serizawa later, believe that. Hagiwara is a journalist that helps to stitch the various details and story threads together, while Shinkichi rounds out the main cast as a kid whose family is killed by Godzilla on Odo Island.
None of these characters are especially remarkable on their own, but at a point, it'll all come together and you'll understand the purposes these characters serve, as all of them have crucial roles in the film's story. But while these characters make up the bulk of the film's human element, there is so much more to Godzilla and its story. The film is full of what we'll call little people; characters who make incredibly brief appearances, but who appear to deliver as much of an emotional impact on the viewer as possible. These are the people of Japan and it's through them that the real impact of the film's events is felt, delivering many of not only this film's hardest hitting moments, but some of the hardest hitting moments in any film you will ever see. I've talked about a few of these moments in the past, one example is in the aftermath of Godzilla's rampage through Tokyo, there is a moment where a woman dies in front of her daughter and all the daughter can do is scream. There's a moment during the rampage where a mother consoles her frightened children as Godzilla approaches, promising that they'll be with their dad soon. When Godzilla destroys a train earlier in the film, we get a glimpse of the terrified, bloodied survivors as he crushes it underfoot. At one point, Godzilla attacks a tower full of reporters, who have accepted their imminent deaths and continue to broadcast while Godzilla destroys the tower. These moments never come across as emotionally manipulative, rather, they feel earned. These are the moments that the film draws attention to the real cost of Godzilla's attack; the human cost, they're all the lives that his attack has destroyed.
I like to think that when it comes to film, I'm quite thick-skinned, but I'll never be ashamed to admit there are multiple moments in this film that break me, there truly is nothing like this film. Then there is Dr Daisuke Serizawa. The film gives precious little about who Serizawa is or where he comes from, though given his reclusive nature, profession and the nature of his invention, it's easy enough to fill in the blanks. Serizawa is a scientist who has invented a superweapon; an Oxygen Destroyer that does exactly what it says on the tin, asphyxiating and disintegrating it's victims by destroying the oxygen atoms in their bodies. This is where the film starts to deal with the ethics of superweapons and as should be expected, it nails it. Unsurprisingly, the Oxygen Destroyer is a direct parallel to the atomic bomb, an unimaginably dangerous weapon with implications far beyond its destructive capabilities. Serizawa fears these implications and keeps his invention a closely guarded secret, sure that if the governments of the world knew what he had created, they would want it for their own ends. This comes to a head towards the end of the film, when the question of using it against Godzilla is raised. Serizawa understands the short term benefit of using it against Godzilla, but equally understands the Pandora's box he would be opening by revealing such a thing to the world, believing that, like the atomic bomb, its use would send humanity down a very dark path. Serizawa is ultimately put in the same position that the Americans were in in 1945; use this weapon now to end a war and save lives, but risk starting a chain of events that could end the world.
This makes the film's ending remarkably melancholic as Serizawa, having agreed to use the Oxygen Destroyer against Godzilla, chooses to die with the monster on the ocean floor, taking the secrets of his invention to the grave with him. The mood is no brighter on the surface as the heroes, victorious over Godzilla, are left to ponder the reality that humanity created this monster, and that others like Godzilla could still be out there. Compared to the celebratory endings of American monster movies of the time like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, this ending is dark and contemplative, a sombre reminder of the new world that humanity has created and the horrors that dwell within it. Fuck me, this film rocks. Do you think this film is done being heavy, guess again, because then we have the Big Guy himself, portrayed here as a cruel god, lashing out against humanity for its sins against nature. There are so many layers to this film's depiction of Godzilla, and about as many possible interpretations; is he a purely evil monster that relishes the destruction he causes, a misunderstood animal responding to a perceived threat, a victim of human cruelty taking his revenge after his atomic baptism, or is he somewhere in the middle of all of those things. In many ways, Godzilla is just as much a victim as the people of Japan, a ghost of the hell that the nation went through during the War that, like the people of Japan, still hasn't let go of it's pain. Godzilla was a very contemporary film when it released in 1954, it had only been nine years since the War ended, during which time, the superpowers of the world were all playing god with the unimaginable power of the atom, something only the Japanese had truly felt the full power of after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Godzilla is an expression of this Cold War anxiety, an unstoppable engine of chaos that spreads death and suffering everywhere it goes, presented from the perspective of a people who had seen that death and suffering in a way no one else had. The film conveys this effortlessly, presenting it's atomic allegory without ever needing to be explicit or heavy handed, it's subdued and melancholic when it needs to be to deliver its message, which is one hell of an achievement for a film about a big dinosaur. The remarkable level of complexity in its titular monster is one of the strongest aspects of the film, and it's only further built upon when he actually shows up. Originally, Godzilla was going to be created using stop motion, just as the Rhedosaurus was in one of this film's biggest inspirations; 1953's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, but when stop motion proved to be too timely and expensive, they thought up a new method, inadvertently creating an entire genre in the process. Their way of getting around their limitations was to put Haruo Nakajima in a suit and have him stomp around a miniature city, a technique that would not only be used for every Godzilla film for the next fifty years, but countless other monster films in-between, from the many other classic sci fi and kaiju films produced by Toho like Rodan, Mothra and The War of the Gargantuas, to Gamera, Ultraman, Gorgo, King Kong and many others. The simple method of mini cities and rubber suits turned out to be pretty tough in reality, especially for Nakajima, who could barely move in the one-hundred kilogram suit and could only wear the thing for a few minutes at a time.
One huge benefit of the suit was that since it was a man in a suit, it could still have anthropomorphic qualities, it could still look human, despite being a terrifying dinosaur. Thanks to the hard work of Nakajima and the film's special effects director, Eiji Tsuburaya, Godzilla came to life in a way that even the best stop motion monsters never could, and the film manages to sell the size and power of the monster almost flawlessly, through a combination of lighting, cinematography, and the use of high speed cameras. The film also made vey good use of composite shots and matte paintings to create a sense of scale, and while the suit and miniatures might look dated in some scenes, there were dozens of shots in this film that I never knew were composite shots, even after watching this film half a dozen times, they are seriously that good. On the subject of seriously that good, Akira Ifukube, he's someone I've mentioned in my previous writings, but while I can talk ad nauseam about all the moving parts of film, I wish I had half that level of knowledge and confidence when it came to music, just so I could at least try to do Ifukube's music justice. Ifukube composed for dozens of films over his career, including many of Toho's classic monster movies, yet his soundtrack for this film still might be his best work, it's music that has endured just as long as Godzilla himself and is still being used in Godzilla films today. The same can be said of the film's director, Ishiro Honda, who brought his experiences from the War into the directing job, giving the film a gritty, grounded feeling to emphasise the reality it was trying to portray.
When watching Godzilla, even after seventy years, it's easy to see just how much work went into it. Everyone who worked on this film was firing on all cylinders, determined to make something really special and the results speak for themselves, Godzilla is more than just really special, sincerely, it is one of the best films ever made. The film was a huge hit with cinema goers in Japan, though the original cut probably wouldn't have gelled well with the sensibilities of the contemporary American audience, so when it was released in America in 1956, it had a new name and new lead star, among other changes. I've never actually watched the American cut of Godzilla, but since it's the seventieth anniversary and it's on the Criterion Blu ray, I might as well. Releasing in 1956 under the title; Godzilla, King of the Monsters, it retells the events of the original film while adding in several new scenes with Canadian actor; Raymond Burr in the role of Steve Martin, a American news correspondent who documents Godzilla's attack on Tokyo. Godzilla, King of the Monsters was a massive hit in the United States when it released, and was the only version of the original Godzilla that was sold in the States for decades, though the general consensus on the film's quality is a bit all over the place from what I've seen. Some say it's an admirable, albeit occasionally schlocky adaptation of the original film while others take a more harsh approach, saying that it strips the original of everything that made it special in an attempt to sell it to the American market. On a first viewing, I find myself leaning more in the direction of the former.
The film follows the events of the original cut very closely, with a handful of scenes trimmed down or removed entirely to shorten the runtime, as well as to make room for some entirely new scenes with Steve Martin. Steve Martin is actually not a bad addition to the story, especially when Godzilla goes on his rampage and he covers the entire attack from his news room window, risking his life by staying at his post even as Godzilla bears down on him. These are undoubtedly the highlights of this cut, thanks entirely to the performance of Raymond Burr. Burr also narrates large chunks of the film, in place of dubbing or subtitles for the Japanese footage, though the scenes where Steve Martin isn't present are dubbed. Some scenes are done well, but some aren't. while for the most part, the editing is clean, it's uncanny to watch some of these edited scenes and to think that Steve Martin was just standing in the background the whole time, smoking his pipe and watching intently. Scenes where he interacts with characters from the original cut like Yamane and Emiko are especially rough, with these characters always conveniently facing away from the camera to hide that they're body doubles. It might be preferable to having Steve Martin just stand in the background for the entire film, but it looks really cheesy if you're at all familiar with the original cut. Not that I'd envy the editor's job, mind you; crowbarring an entirely new character into a film while keeping the story as in-tact as possible can't be easy, but it's certainly not as bad as something like Gammera The Invincible, so I think they did the best they could.
More annoying is that because of how chopped up the original film is here, a lot of key points of its story and message had to be cut down or given to Steve Martin to narrate, which dulls some of the original film's edge, while I wouldn't call the film sanitised, for the most part, there is a rawness to the original film that this American cut just doesn't have to the same degree, and what's worse is that I'm sure that was intentional. The worst offender in this regard is the film's ending, which removes the original film's implication that humanity created Godzilla and will one day create another, instead ending on a more positive note with Steve Martin saying the world can live again. This ending is a lot less depressing than the Japanese ending, but it defangs that incredible original ending to make the film more friendly to the masses, missing that ending's point in the process. But I suppose the biggest issue that Godzilla, King of the Monsters has is that in the current day, it's redundant. It was made in a time when American audiences weren't interested in foreign films and for a long time, it was the only version of Godzilla available in the United States. But these days, the original Japanese Godzilla is widely available and in the Criterion Collection that I own, both versions are on the same disc, which just leaves the question of why I would watch a janky recut of one of the best films ever made when I could just watch the original. Ironically, in an attempt to adapt Godzilla for the west, they made a film that's even more dated than the original; smoothing out many of it's edges to make it more palatable for the audiences of the time, but shaving off pieces of it's timelessness in the process. But to be fair, a janky recut of one of the best films ever made is still a pretty high bar, even if watching it can often be a downright weird experience.
If only I'd never invented it
You'd expect that after seventy years, a black and white monster movie would have lost a lot of its effectiveness, but even after all those years and all the change that the film landscape has seen in that time, Godzilla has lost none. It is and always will be one of the most powerful films ever made, and it doesn't matter what or how much I could say, I will never do the film the justice it deserves. Godzilla is dark, existential, frightening, and packs themes and ideas far above its station as a monster movie, it is a piece of art that everyone owes it to themselves to watch. Godzilla is still a masterpiece after seven decades, it will still be a masterpiece for all the decades to come, and I could never recommend this film strongly enough, it is, beyond any shadow of doubt, an absolute must watch.
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