Godzilla: King of the Monsters/Gojira (1954/1956) ****
This is it, the first and probably still the best of the Japanese monster movies, or kaiju eiga. This is the film that defines the genre, and in most people’s eyes, it also defines the somewhat broader genre of 50’s-style monster rampage movies as a whole, regardless of their countries of origin. In the half-century since its release, Godzilla: King of the Monsters/Gojira has taken on a truly mythic stature, transcending about as rigid a cultural boundary as you’re ever going to find in the developed world. And I’m not just talking about movie geeks, either; even if you’ve never heard of Gamera, Gilala, or even Mothra, you probably know who Godzilla is. One result of this is that the film almost seems like too big a subject for a mere movie review, and in fact entire books have been written about Godzilla, its sequels, its competitors and copycats, and the perverse way in which the movie gave rise to a phenomenon all out of proportion to the expectations and ambitions of the people who created it. But don’t you go thinking that’s going to stop me.
The fact of the matter is that the tale of Gojira’s origins will sound familiar to any follower of exploitation cinema. In 1952, a 20th-anniversary re-release of King Kong (okay, so they jumped the gun a little-- it’s not like this was the first time something like that had happened in Hollywood) stunned the movie industry by out-grossing nearly every first-run film on the market. True to form, Hollywood swung into full frenzy, with everybody and his mother rushing to create a new giant-monster film to cash in on RKO’s unexpected success. Among the first of these movies to see release was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), in which a made-up dinosaur called a Rhedosaurus terrorizes New York until it is destroyed by an injection of radioisotopes. The most significant thing about The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is the excuse that the filmmakers devised for bringing a dinosaur into the modern world-- through a process that the film understandably spends little time explaining, the testing of American hydrogen bombs restores the creature to life. What all of this has to do with Gojira is that both of the aforementioned movies played in Japanese theaters as well as American. Nothing of the sort had ever appeared on the Japanese screen before, and the resulting grosses swiftly set the cogs turning in the head of Toho Studios producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, who slapped together a pitch for the studio bigwigs on a plane-trip to Tokyo. That pitch was apparently pretty impressive, because the studio green-lighted the film and put the conspicuously talented director Ishiro Honda (not Inoshiro Honda, as he is so often credited in the American versions of his movies) and special effects godfather Eiji Tsubaraya in charge of the project. What made Japan’s answer to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms different from the legions of America-made imitations was a combination of the fact that Toho was a big-time studio, willing to throw big-time money at the production, and the unique resonance that the idea of an A-bomb-spawned monster had in the Japanese psyche. We are talking, after all, about the only people in the world who have ever been on the receiving end of a nuclear attack, and whose land was, in the early 1950’s, still under American occupation and separated by only a relatively narrow stretch of sea from the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. I think it is thus fair to say that the Japanese experienced the nuclear nightmare of the Cold War in a way that no other nation on Earth did. In the Japanese context, a movie about an atom-powered monster meant far more than it could in the United States.
The fact that Americans were ill-equipped to take the idea behind Gojira as seriously as the Japanese can be seen from what happened to the movie when it was picked up for American distribution-- the first time such a thing had happened to a Japanese fantasy or science fiction film. To begin with, the movie was drastically re-edited in order to bring it more into line with its distributors’ understanding of American tastes, apparently quickening the pace substantially. The “studio” (really nothing more than a hastily-assembled corporation called the Godzilla Releasing Company whose sole purpose was [duh] to release Godzilla) even went so far as to shoot a substantial amount of new footage with up-and-coming American actor Raymond Burr, on the theory that American audiences would be unlikely to turn out for a movie with an all-Japanese cast. In addition, the movie, retitled Godzilla: King of the Monsters, was advertised here in much the same way as any cheap-jack monster flick of the day-- the posters, lobby cards, trailers, etc. could all be described with a single word: lurid.
It is thus very surprising to see how serious the American version is. Having never seen the Japanese original, I am in no position to make a comparison, but even in its re-cut American guise, it is clear from the very first frame that this is no standard-issue monster mash. There is a short prologue, in which American journalist Steve Martin (Burr, of course) comments in voice-over on the panorama of destruction displayed on the screen, and then the movie sets about showing us how it all happened.
The real story begins at sea, with the destruction by an unexplained force of a Japanese fishing vessel. (This scene is a conscious echo of the “Fukuryu Maru Incident,” in which a Japanese tuna trawler blundered onto the site of an American H-bomb test. Most of the ship’s crew died of radiation poisoning or cancer, and there was a nation-wide recall of tuna in Japan.) Over the next few days, seven more ships meet a similar fate; of those whose radio operators were able to get out a last message, all tell exactly the same story of a blinding flash followed by a great fireball erupting around the ship. Martin is among the first to hear the story because his plane to Tokyo coincidentally flew over the site of the first shipwreck, at almost exactly the moment of the catastrophe. Upon his landing in Japan, the local authorities question him, and all the other passengers, about anything they might have seen from their windows as they passed overhead. Martin has nothing to offer the officials from the Bureau of Maritime Safety, but his connections are such that he is able to follow and report on related developments as they unfold.
To begin with, Martin is close friends with a young scientist named Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata, who like most of the cast became a kaiju eiga regular as a result of his appearance here, showing up later in movies like Rodan and Varan the Unbelievable). Serizawa’s fiancee, Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kochi, of Half-Human and The Mysterians), turns out to be the daughter of renowned paleontologist and marine biologist Dr. Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura, from Kwaidan and Gorath), who becomes involved after it is suggested that some sort of living thing might be to blame for the destruction. You see, there is a small island called Oto, off the Pacific coast of Japan, whose inhabitants are the only people alive to have seen any of the shipwrecks take place. Not only that, it was on Oto that the only survivor of any of the sinkings washed ashore (though he died before he could say anything of much use). This is important, because the people of Oto have long believed the sea around their island to be inhabited by a hideous monster of almost limitless destructive power, and it is the consensus on the island that their monster-- Godzilla-- is behind the sinkings. When Dr. Yamane, his daughter, and a marine named Ogata (Akira Takarada, later of The Last War and Latitude Zero) embark for Oto in order to interview the natives, Martin and his interpreter, Otomo, tag along. (This business with the interpreter is actually a pretty neat trick. It keeps the dubbing to a bare minimum while adding an unexpected extra layer of authenticity to the film-- unless, or course, you speak Japanese, in which case you’ll notice that the original dialogue almost invariably says something different from the translations Otomo feeds his boss.) Whatever they may have thought about monsters before, this trip will make believers of them all. One night, while the island is lashed by a typhoon, something big pays a visit to Oto to add to the damage. It leaves a calling card in the form of huge footprints, about three feet deep and about as long as a respectably-sized car, and a trail of strontium-90 contamination. As Dr. Yamane begins to study these phenomena, one of the islanders starts ringing a big bell, apparently a signal to take to the hills for protection. Just about the time that the outsiders begin to wonder what they might need protection from, Godzilla makes his first appearance, looming over a ridge of hills as he stomps back to the sea.
The inevitable bad-paleontology press conference follows once the characters have returned to Japan. At the end of the conference, Dr. Yamane reveals his belief that the monster was created by fallout from American H-bomb experiments, which would certainly explain why everything Godzilla touches becomes radioactive. (I have two asides regarding this conference. The first has to do with the science, the second with measurements. I sincerely hope you don’t need me to tell you that the Jurassic Period was a hell of a lot longer ago than 2 million years-- like about 130 million years longer ago! Any six-year-old dinosaur nut could tell you that! Secondly, at one point, Dr. Yamane says that Godzilla is “over 400 feet tall.” This statement errs rather strongly in the opposite direction; according to Toho, Godzilla’s height is 50 meters, or about 165 feet. I find myself wondering whether the American distributors thought that wasn’t impressive enough, or whether this is simply another manifestation of the well-documented fact that most Americans don’t know the metric system from their nutsacks.) The principal result of this conference is that the authorities decide that the thing to do is track Godzilla down with sonar, and depth-charge his ass, beginning a proud monster movie tradition.
The flipside of that proud tradition-- the miserable failure of depth charges to do any harm to the monster-- also begins here. While Japan celebrates what must surely be the destruction of the monster, Godzilla gives all six million people of Tokyo the rudest possible awakening by surfacing out in their harbor. He then lumbers ashore and makes his first attack on Japanese territory, leveling Tokyo’s shipping district before returning to the sea for unknown reasons. The next day, the authorities (who are rightly certain that the monster will be coming back) order Tokyo to be encircled by high-tension electrical towers-- in essence, the greatest electrified fence of all time. Against all odds, the project is completed by nightfall, when the creature takes the stage for his encore performance. A fat lot of good it does Tokyo, though. 300,000 volts of electricity turn out to bother Godzilla just enough to make him want to melt a hole in the electric cordon with his thermonuclear breath. Then begins what is almost certainly the single best monster rampage in cinema history, as Godzilla does to Tokyo what Little Boy and Fat Man did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effortlessly brushing aside the full power of the Japanese military in the process.
There’s only one thing that might be able to stop Godzilla, but only two people on Earth even know that it exists. One of those people is its inventor, Dr. Serizawa. The other is Emiko Yamane. Earlier in the film, Emiko went to see her husband-to-be with the intention of telling him about her developing relationship with Ogata, whom she now wants to marry instead of the scientist. (My understanding is that this subplot is far more important in Gojira than it is in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and that many of the scenes in which it unfolds were cut to make room for Raymond Burr.) She never got a chance to deliver her message, though, because Serizawa immediately took her down to his lab to show her his new discovery. What Serizawa had come up with was a chemical process capable of sucking all dissolved oxygen out of a body of water, rendering that water completely unlivable. Any organism in the water when the chemical (which Serizawa calls the Oxygen Destroyer) does its work will die in a matter of seconds. Serizawa knew instantly that this discovery would be important, but he swore Emiko to the strictest secrecy because, in its present form, the Oxygen Destroyer was useful as a weapon only, and the pacifistic Serizawa wanted to keep a lid on his discovery until he could find a more constructive application for it. After the destruction of Tokyo, Emiko returns to Serizawa, in company with Ogata, in the hope of persuading him to allow the Oxygen Destroyer to be used against Godzilla. After much arguing and soul-searching, Serizawa agrees.
The next day, Serizawa, Ogata, Emiko, and her father (along with Martin and his interpreter) set off on a sonar-equipped ship to find Godzilla. The beast is swiftly located, and Serizawa and Ogata descend to the sea-floor with the Oxygen Destroyer. What follows may be the most moving scene in any giant monster movie ever; at the very least, it is rivaled only by the death of the titular monster in the original King Kong. The scene operates on two levels. First, there is the fact that Honda portrays the now-doomed Godzilla in a startlingly sympathetic light. When the two divers find him, the monster is simply going about the normal business of his life-- he has no idea what’s coming, and it is all but impossible not to feel strangely sorry for him as the men sneak up on him with their bottle full of death. Secondly, the tragic elements of Serizawa’s character-- his tortured idealism, the inner conflict that only people who are brought up in a culture that takes honor and duty very seriously are capable of-- come into full bloom here, as he cuts his own lifeline, forcing the crew of the ship to let him die with Godzilla, thereby making sure that the secret of the Oxygen Destroyer dies as well. (I can only imagine how hard this scene must hit in the Japanese version, where Serizawa is actually allowed enough screen-time for serious character development.)
The most important question a person must try to answer when writing about this movie is exactly what it is about Godzilla: King of the Monsters that has allowed it to become so much more than just another flick about a huge, radioactive monster. I’ve already mentioned the idea that the Japanese have a unique perspective on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, but to say that really only changes the terms of the question without answering it. Because the fact is that I’m not Japanese, nor have I seen the Japanese version of this film, but Godzilla: King of the Monsters still affects me in a way that The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and, for that matter, any of Godzilla’s sequels (and I’ve seen just about all of them) do not. Part of it, I think, has to do with the way the movie was shot. The grainy, high-contrast black and white of the picture gives the film a moodiness that is almost impossible to achieve in full color. It also works wonders for the special effects by hiding the shortcomings of the monster suit and the miniature sets (though it can’t disguise the crappiness of the hand-puppet Godzilla that Tsubaraya used for an unfortunately large number of close-up shots). It is also important to take the score into account. Usually, I don’t even notice the background music in the movies I watch. With this film, though, any analysis that ignores the effect of Akira Ifukube’s score is missing much of the action. Ifukube is a man who knows what music is capable of, and who knows how best to use it to achieve the desired effect. And because he is both Japanese and old enough to have lived in a Japan that had not yet begun to recast itself so much in the image of the West, he brings to his work a sensibility that differs noticeably from that of Western composers. The total effect is that you really hear his music, and are fully conscious of how perfectly it fits the images to which it is set. Ifukube, by the way, also created Godzilla’s instantly recognizable roar-- and I believe the mere fact that Godzilla has an instantly recognizable roar says all that I need to on that subject.
But there has to be more at work here than crafty music and cinematography, and I think that much of it can be found in the nature of the monster himself. Godzilla (at least in this film) is larger than life in a way that the Rhedosaurus is not. There’s his sheer size, for one thing, which increases the scale on which the movie as a whole operates. The Rhedosaurus kills a couple of people, wrecks a few cars, damages some buildings, and destroys a roller coaster. Godzilla levels all of Tokyo, killing thousands in the process. The military is unable to stop the Rhedosaurus solely because it is prevented by a combination of logistical accidents from bringing its full power to bear. Godzilla takes everything the army, navy, and air force can throw at him, and still flattens Japan’s largest city. Basically, Godzilla is the atom bomb in a way that the Rhedosaurus, The Amazing Colossal Man, and Tarantula are not. Godzilla is a force of limitless destructive power, created by a humanity that had no real idea what it was doing, and which can only be stopped if, God help us, we render it obsolete by creating something even worse! Another important point to consider in trying to account for this movie’s curious impact is the fact that, alone among the monster movies that I know of, it dwells at considerable length on the aftermath of the monster’s attack. Think about this. In most monster movies, the monster is destroyed before it is able to cause any meaningful damage, and even in those rare instances (Gorgo, for example) where the monster cannot be stopped in time, the end of the film coincides almost exactly with the end of the immediate menace posed by the monster. In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, on the other hand, the creature’s climactic rampage through Tokyo ends a good twenty minutes before the closing credits. Honda has time to show us the ravaged remains of the city, the shell-shocked, homeless, wounded survivors (“human wreckage,” to use a phrase from one of Raymond Burr’s voice-overs)-- time, in other words, to show us how Godzilla has affected people’s lives. Look for anything comparable in The Beginning of the End or Earth vs. the Spider, and you will look in vain. And if there is one single thing that sets this movie apart, that makes it work in a way that no other film of its kind does, it may just be that right there.
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