Cast:
Akira Takarada (Hideto Ogata), Momoko Kōchi (Emiko Yamane), Akihiko Hirata (Dr. Daisuke Serizawa), Takashi Shimura (Dr. Kyohei Yamane), Fuyuki Murakami (Dr. Tanabe), Sachio Sakai (Hagiwara), with Ren Yamamoto (Masaji Yamada) and Haruo Nakajima & Katsumi Tezuka (Godzilla) Directed by Ishirō Honda.
Review:
"Having seen the terror of the atomic bomb in real life, it is most important to weave this element into the film well, so that everyone will understand."
From my review on June 16, 2012:
This is the first world cinema film to come from Japan [on Movie Night]. Gojira (also known as Godzilla) is a film franchise over 50 years old with 28 films in exactly 50 years (1954-2004). This film is chilling, with good atmosphere, with some night scenes that are genuinely frightening. The effects look good to this day, giving you a scare and two. The setting in Japan with the black and white color of the film make it even more threatening as the effects could be hide any mistakes visible in color. Setting it in Japan after the devastation from World War II only adds to it more. The scene that is chilling is at the near end is with the choir girls singing as the city is in peril. This film may be a bit slow at times, but it is still an achievement in filmmaking to this day after 58 years.
I had been waiting to look back at the original Godzilla (known in the Hepburn romanization as Gojira and occasionally released on home media as such) for a long time. After all of these years, I looked forward most to covering it again probably more than seeing the follow-up films that came in its wake. But to know it is to understand how it came together so curiously: Tomoyuki Tanaka had first come up with a idea to do a giant monster film after the failure to make a film in Indonesia (set during the Japanese occupation the previous decade, incidentally). He was flying back on a plane, and it came to him to basically take inspiration from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and the Daigo Fukuryū Maru incident, in which a boat had suffered from contamination after the Bikini Atoll was going through nuclear testing in March of 1954 (one crew member died from radiation sickness, the others survived). Shigeru Kayama was hired to do the initial treatment (which had ideas such as featuring footage of the Maru that went by the wayside) before Takeo Murata and Ishirō Honda wrote the screenplay; Honda had been hired to direct after people such as Senkichi Taniguchi declined. Teizō Toshimitsu and Akira Watanabe designed the creature under the supervision of Eiji Tsuburaya while two performers would be in the suit. Toho actually had a radio drama air during the summer in order to try and build interest for audiences before eventually showing photos of the monster in newspapers prior to release. The movie was first released in one city (Nagoya) on October 27, 1954 before getting a nationwide showing on November 3, 1954, to profound success in its native country. As people already know, an Americanized version of the film was released in 1956 that was trimmed and re-edited, although Toho would later use the "King of the Monsters" label to refer to the character to go along with even showing the edit as "Monster King Godzilla (Kaiju o Gojira)" in theaters. While he didn't direct the 1955 sequel, Honda would direct various other productions for Toho, such as the color monster movie Rodan (1956) and seven of the follow-up Godzilla films from King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) to Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975).
Admittedly, it is a movie that is more historical for what it spawned in its wake more than just being a perfect movie. It is easy to see where the American edit found the 96-minute runtime something to try and edit down for some sort of idea of standards in getting to the point, and one might wonder what the fuss is in that buildup to destruction. But admirers (such as the one I grew up with) see those composite shots mixed with miniatures and can enjoy the craftsmanship anyway for a movie that is sobering in its spectacle and depiction of sacrifice that is moody and capably made in a manner that set a blueprint worth cribbing from in the years to pass. In the seven decades since its release, technology has improved in making a movie monster look more "real" and for some there have been some quality follow-up Godzilla films (perhaps in story or otherwise), but the power of the original still manages to strike a nerve in terms of the sheer curiosity it generated in how it all came to be. Even trying to make an American rendition (1998, 2014) only shows that big money isn't everything (I say this as someone who likes some of those films in selective ways). The acting works with the bleak atmosphere in sheer confidence for what its director wanted to do in humanism, working its main triangle (Takarada-Kochi-Hirata) to worthwhile drama, particularly with Hirata in terms of conflict for what is most important when it comes to technology and the face of danger. Shimura just provides the established presence of worried curiosity that makes the mark handily. Sure, you would see some of these actors again in other Godzilla films, but they really did just hit out of the park in tension on the first try in ways that is easier to celebrate rather than replicate. The movie has carefully dedicated angles, as worked on by Masao Tamai with the cameras of the time (namely old ones) to go alongside a dazzling musical score by Akira Ifukube to accentuate the terror. It just manages to balance the fine line of showing terror (mostly in the reactions rather than directly interacting with the creature) without testing one's patience for the matters at hand. The prayer-for-peace sequence is especially startling in its sincerity. The climax itself is carefully curated in a way that you don't always see in impactful decision-making without needing bombast to drive it all home, particularly in those last moments musing about the nature of where nuclear testing or war may go if left to certain hands. Far from exploitive, there is real passion at hand from Honda and company in what we end up celebrating as a whole rather than simply going right in on just the effects. Metaphor or monster, the power of Godzilla is in just how enduring it all is as the years go on in humanistic filmmaking that made for worthwhile entertainment in ways that we still marvel at to this day.
Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.
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