Some Thoughts About Godzilla (1954)

In truth, there isn’t all that much one can still add to everything that has been written about the movie that started it all, Ishiro Honda’s incredible original Gojira, a film that has been something of a given for me all of my life, at first in the curious German cut (that is based on the US cut, but mutilated further), then in the much superior Japanese original.

My umpteenth rewatch, however, did bring up a handful of observations: first, how much of a horror movie this initial Godzilla movie is at its beginning, with much of the monster action taking place in gloomily lit nights scenes, and a structure that slowly reveals the giant lizard that’s going to threaten Japan. Much of the film’s visual language must of course have resonated quite heavily with a populace that has lived through the war years and their particularly brutal end, and at first, these shots as well seem to be in the service of simply making the horror more horrific.

But the more emotional gravitas the film gains – and this film is all about gravitas, and sadness, and things and people destroyed in the end even when the world is saved – the less Honda uses his shots of destruction that way, and instead utilizes them to argue his emotional, humane and political points. In the end, Honda’s always the humanist, the pacifist who enjoys shots of destructive technology with the best of them but is also genuinely saddened at their use, and only the guy trying to creep us out on the way to get there.

Speaking of the political, it’s interesting to watch a couple of scenes here after Shin Godzilla and after Godzilla Minus One, how important Godzilla’s moments of the squabbling, ineffectual, officials will become to these films in the century after it was made.

In general, one of Honda’s particular strengths here isn’t just that he creates surprisingly complex characters particularly in Drs Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) and Yamane (Takashi Shimura), but that he understands how to create side characters who feel memorable and alive enough to stand up to the giant lizard with the atomic breath – which most kaiju and giant monster movies simply don’t manage.

It is also fascinating to keep in mind how much this one is a movie all about the filmmakers figuring out how to do what they are trying to achieve while doing it, and how little this looks like a movie made by people who weren’t quite sure how to do it until they did it. In fact, Godzilla feels like a fully thought through and composed masterpiece from shot one to its finish, where one has to look very hard for the traces of the scrappiness of some of the production.