A while back I watched and reviewed Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), the Americanized version of the first installment of the Japanese Godzilla franchise. Now I’ve seen the true original, though edited for television, called Gojira (1954, aka Godzilla, akaゴジラ).
Compared to my scant memories of the Americanized version, this is a more coherent tale. It’s an allegory concerning a challenge unique to the Modern Era: what to do with society-threatening challenges such as adversaries willing and capable of total war, as symbolized by the appearance of the merciless and all-powerful (and, not coincidentally, radioactive) Godzilla, when the only viable defense are weapons that are themselves a threat to the survival of mankind if misused, in this case a weapon which destroys oxygen in water, rendering it a danger to all sea life, and therefore all humanity. You can consider weapons of biological, chemical, or nuclear origin to be the analogous element.
He drops them on the ground, then he steps on them. After we get to briefly see the terrorized passengers. Surprisingly effective.
From this view, the story makes sense. Godzilla’s appearance and presence are terrifying, if you’re capable of putting yourself in the place of the Japanese. He has a terribly misshapen head (much worse than those we see in the typical sequel), a rage against humanity, and his traditional bad breath weapon that cannot be stopped. Worse, though, is his behavior, and where this story is willing to go: the explicit and graphic death of men, women, and children. This is on two levels – the mass carnage of the threat to humanity, which a friend once observed makes for statistics, not tragedy; and the deeply personal deaths of people who are killed through Godzilla’s immediate actions, through fire, concussion, and general mayhem. While it’s true that undoubtedly fictional people are killed in the various and far-fetched sequels to this initial installment, it’s rare, if ever, that the deaths are so deeply personal and sobering. This happens because this story takes the few moments necessary to humanize the victims, such as those newsmen trapped in a radio tower, still doing their jobs as Godzilla approaches, tries to eat them, and then knocks the tower over, plunging them to their deaths. Or the young mother, holding her children on a sidewalk as Godzilla approaches, telling her children that soon they’ll be joining their father, presumably already dead. And, soon, they are dead.
Godzilla, in his first cinematic appearance, is vast evil incarnate, and the time spent on this in the story is important to drive home the point that the use of the frightening defense, dangerous as its very existence might be, is necessary, and by its necessity, it’s a warning that the path humanity is taking, with its rivalries and xenophobia, is presenting dangers out of proportion to history. The point is that changing our behaviors is necessary, or there won’t be any behaviors to change, eventually.
Technically speaking, this movie is a mixed bag. The story is coherent and necessary, but the major characters are not particularly compelling, at least not in comparison to Godzilla. The special effects range the spectrum from awful to the creepily effective. I’ve used images of Goya’s The Colossus in previous reviews of other Godzilla movies, and it remains an eerily effective analogy. Godzilla striding through Tokyo, clothed in shadow and the light of the flames of a city in its death throes, is quite moving, and the post-attack ruins are strongly, strongly reminiscent of the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after American nuclear bombs destroyed them in World War II. Godzilla’s bad breath weapon is not particularly well done, but, as the experienced Godzilla fan knows, his spinal ridges light up when he’s about to use the bad breath, and for some reason I thought that was, again, quite a creepy effect.
In the end, I don’t necessarily recommend Gojira, but if you have a chance and are in the mood to see it in light of the Japanese experience as victims of nuclear weapons, it’s worth your time.
And, yeah, I feel weird writing a positive review of the first Godzilla movie.
