Godzilla (

1954

)

I never know how much historical background is necessary to introduce these reviews. Surely everyone that could potentially read this review knows that the US dropped two atom bombs on Japan in 1945 and why they did so. However, my faith in basic historical literacy was somewhat shaken by this book (it’s real). So allow me to clarify a few things for the extremely dense. In May 1945 Germany surrendered to the allies; in July 1945 the American government detonated the 1st atomic bomb (not the hydrogen bomb, that as we will see comes later); and in August the A-bomb (not the H-bomb there is an order of magnitude difference between their destructive power) was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The reason for these bombings and the debate surrounding them is an issue of considerable complexity and importance, and to do justice to it would take an essay that would dwarf the portion of this review actually about the film. For our purposes, it must suffice to say that the Americans believed dropping the atomic bombs would shorten the war and strengthen their negotiating position with the Soviets and that the destruction wrought by the two atomic bombings has shaped the Japanese national identity to this day.

Gradually, Japan rebuilt itself after the war, developing a confusing mixture of respect and resentment for the Americans who had conquered them. After the US A-bomb monopoly ended in 1949, the Truman administration ordered the creation of the Hydrogen bomb, mostly out of fear of the Russians developing the weapon before them. The first H-bomb was detonated on November 1st, 1952, tests of the H-bomb would continue intermittently throughout the 1950s. One such test, code-named Castle Bravo, bathed an ill-fated Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryū Maru, in radioactive fallout. When I say ill-fated, I mean cosmically unlucky. Not only was the blast of Castle Bravo significantly larger than estimated, but also the weather patterns shifted the fallout directly at the Daigo Fukuryū Maru. The crew of the fishing boat grew deathly ill with radiation poisoning and died slowly, one by one. The event kindled a major uproar in Japan about the reckless atomic testing of the Americans in particular and the dangerous proliferation of atomic weapons in general. It was in this atmosphere, in a land still riven by the horrors of atomic war, that the most influential, cinematic monster of the later 20th century was born: I speak of course of Godzilla.

The film makes no secret of its topical inspiration, as it opens with a fishing boat destroyed by a mysterious disturbance far out at sea. Here though, the fishing boat is followed to the depths by a score of other vessels before the reason for the disasters is revealed: A gigantic dinosaur, from some lost epoch of history, has been living at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean for the past hundred million odd years. The recent Hydrogen bomb tests have roused the monster and forced it out of its preferred habitat. Now the beast is heading on a direct course for Tokyo and smashing everything in its path. From there, you probably already know the story, JSDF warships, troops, tanks, and planes fail to halt the creature’s advance. Even a desperate attempt to stop the creature with a massive barbed wire fence, flooded with 50,000 volts of electricity barely slows the monsters' approach.

The visual effects are remarkable and retain much of there power even decades after the film’s release. Part of the mystique stems from the sound design. Dull trembling thuds precede the monster’s appearances, at first only barely audible in the background but growing swiftly loader as the creature nears. Then there is that terrible roar, which sounds like a midway point between a wounded animal and a screeching engine. It’s a strange, almost unearthly noise that serves the monster better as an object of horror than it will in later sequels when Godzilla becomes more of a reluctant defender of humanity than a menace. The monster also looks great. Rather than follow the American model of using gigantic puppets, Claymation, or actual animals (the least expensive and consequently Bert I. Gordon’s favorite), Godzilla dresses a human actor up in a rubber monster suit. The effect produces a creature that is much more fluidly animated and natural-looking than the other approaches. It doubtlessly freed up funds for the miniature work, which is some truly first-rate work.

The thing that struck me the most about Godzilla is how little it resembles its successors. Most of the later entries in the franchise are extremely goofy and wildly entertaining. This is, after all, a series in which a giant fire-breathing dinosaur battles robots, sea-monsters, aliens, and colossal butterflies. The original Godzilla is none of these things. It is instead a sober meditation on the devastation that war brings to average people. Only about half the film concerns itself directly with the actions of the titular monster or any of the named human characters. The rest deals with the thousands killed in the destruction, and the millions made into refugees. In the background of important scenes, we see columns of evacuating civilians, carrying whatever meager possessions they can bring with them. Before the monster’s onslaught, we hear society girls complaining about having to evacuate the city, after only narrowly missing the destruction of Nagasaki. During Godzilla’s climactic rampage through Tokyo, we hear a war-widow comforting her wailing children by telling them that soon they will be with their dead father. The film never allows you to forget the human cost of the monster’s rampage, and thus never lets you kick back and enjoy the spectacle of the ruined cityscape that way that later kaiju films would. For every building the monster topples or eradicates with his atomic fire, you can’t help but imagine the hundreds of homeless families that it just created. For this reason, I find it somewhat amazing that Ishiro Honda, the same man who would make some of the goofiest kaiju films like Space Amoeba (1970) and Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), also directed this film. I suspect much of the film’s tone comes from Honda’s co-writer Takeo Murata, who collaborated with Honda on several of the more “serious” kaiju films like Rodan (1956) and Godzilla Raids Again (1955).

At this point, it’s helpful to compare Godzilla to Them! (1954) or The Beginning of the End (1957) or really just about any American giant monster movie from the same era. In all those films, despite the lofty rhetoric of the main characters, the monsters are vanquished with minimal loss of life or destruction of property. Them! (1954) is particularly bad in this respect, talking up the giant ants as the harbingers of the apocalypse and then dispatching them with little more damage than a few lost sugar shipments and a scuttled battleship. This optimism doubtlessly reflected America’s attitude about their chances in a nuclear war in the early to mid-1950s (the better informed were considerably more worried, but constituted a tiny minority). By contrast, the Japanese, having lived through history’s first (and God willing only) atomic bombardments, were better able to gauge the possible destructiveness of WWIII. Godzilla reflects this grim knowledge, with the ruined cityscape being far larger and far more harrowing than anything offered by its Western competitors. Yet reducing Godzilla to fear of nuclear annihilation doesn’t really do the film justice, there is an element of almost reverential awe for Godzilla and by extension the atomic bomb. The power to destroy is also the power to redeem and remake. It’s a deeply unsettling view that holds that not only can everything we know be eradicated, but also that such destruction could somehow be a good thing. Such a sentiment encapsulates why the original Godzilla is such a respected classic and also why the sequels where the metaphor for atomic war became a heroic champion are so much more fun.