In 1954, Gojira hit Japanese theaters and was a sensation. For those who don’t know, Gojira is the original Japanese Godzilla movie that started the series. This first film is a dark and serious movie, unlike all the ones that followed. For most of my life, only the heavily cut Americanized version was available. Fortunately for me, Toho Studios decided to restore and remaster the epic for its 50th anniversary DVD release. So now that I have my hands on it, does it live up to its reputation as a classic?
The movie starts with a strident and bombastic theme that fits the tension that permeates the production. After the credits roll, an idyllic scene of a merchant ship’s crew relaxing on deck seems very serene. A bright flash of light gets their attention drawn to by a strange glowing mass in the water. Another flash and the ship explodes into flames.
The distress call of the Kingo Maru results in the Eiko Maru being sent to find it, whereupon it promptly sails into a glowing circle of water before exploding like the first ship.
As news spreads of the shipping line’s losses, upset family members crowd the home office and demand information. No, this isn’t like a kiddy movie at all as it is all played very straight for maximum emotional impact. The beleaguered company officials and angry relatives of the sailors have a confrontation interrupted by a radio report. Hopes are dashed for only one survivor has washed onshore a small fishing island. He insists a monster did it before passing out, leading an old man to speak of Gojira being responsible.
An expedition led by Professor Kyohei Yamane is mounted to Odo Island with him in charge. Being a paleontologist, he is intrigued by the idea that a prehistoric dinosaur might be responsible. Going along with him is his daughter, Emiko, and her boyfriend, Aideto Ogata. Emiko is her father’s main assistant and was promised in marriage to another scientist – not Ogata.
Ogata is a salvage officer, though it isn’t made completely clear except for him being in uniform some of the time. With that, we have our three main characters introduced, with a fourth briefly seen on the dock as their ship departs. He will be seen later.
Once at Odo Island, a first wave of investigators and a reporter listen to an old man expound about how young women used to be sacrificed to the monster, Gojira, to appease his hunger. It is an interesting scene with the backdrop of a native ritual meant to exorcise the beast. As the ritual reaches its climax the wind begins to pick up for a storm is coming.
Later that night the thunder sounds curiously like giant footsteps.What follows is a nightmare for the residents of the island, especially Shinkichi, a teen who watches in horror as his brother and sister-in-law die during the storm. Something huge is out there.
The morning brings light, if not some enlightenment as to what happened the night before. Professor Yamane finds a huge depression that he surmises is the footprint of a giant animal. Simultaneously, government workers detect radioactive contamination of the wells in the village and then the footprint. Even stranger than the radiation is the discovery of a fresh trilobyte corpse in the footprint, those creatures having been extinct for millions of years.
An alarm bell being hammered interrupts the speculation and everyone rushes up the hills to see what is going on. The sound of thunderous footsteps precede the rearing up of Gojira’s ugly head and his rusty roar that is so identified with the giant amphibian. A quick retreat segues into government hearings on what to do about this extraordinary situation.
The hearings are terrific drama with arguments over whether or not to go public with what has happened. Fears of panic, economic loss, and damaged foreign relations eventually lose to the public need to know. Action is taken as the Japanese Self Defense Force sends its destroyers to sea with depth charges. The good Professor is dismayed as he wants to study the monster, not kill it.
Of course Gojira is too tough to be harmed by the depth charges. Having absorbed an immense amount of radiation and still kicking, puny measures such as that only drive him toward Tokyo harbor. The concern over what might be able to kill the monster begins to be raised.
While this is going on, plot line B is revealed. The mysterious man at the docks is revealed to be Doctor Daisuke Serizawa, a man with a murky past. Sometime during WWII, he lost his eye and was scarred but it is his connections to a German scientist that hint at his past. The German has told the media that Serizawa has a weapon design that could stop the beats.
Serizawa is cold and driven, refusing to acknowledge that he has anything that could be of help. After turning a reporter away, he shows Emiko (she was supposed to marry him at some point and has come to tell him about Ogata) what he has been working on in his lab. Showing her a fish tank, he runs current into it and drops a device into the water. What happens next is not show, but she screams in horror and covers her face. Serizawa demands and gets a promise from her not to tell anyone about his secret.
That night, air raid sirens sound in Tokyo as monstrous footsteps are heard as Gojira makes landfall like a bipedal typhoon. Scenes of citizens evacuating follow and the military mobilizes. His immense size is fully revealed as he strides into the city downing power lines and destroying a commuter train. With only machine guns, the army fails to deter Gojira. He does as he pleases, then heads off into the water again.
At this point, all the classic elements of a 1950s monster movie are in place: radiation induced mutant monster, the scientist wanting to save/study the mutant, and the military out to to kill the beast. Which means it is time to roll the tanks and artillery out!
But first, an attempt to keep Gojira out of Tokyo by overcharging the power lines goes very badly. Not impressed, the big guy unleashes his radioactive breath like an atomic age dragon. Looking like glowing steam, it is effective on screen, far more so than later versions.
His halitosis proves lethal to towers, tanks, and cars. The miniatures work is quite good for its time and many scenes are still impressive today. Director Ishiro Honda’s excellent use of lighting and composition makes for a fevered nightmare on screen.
Watching Tokyo burn had to have brought back memories of the B-29 fire bombings for Japanese audiences. Scenes showing people fleeing for bomb shelters and one of a woman telling her young children they will soon be with their father as she prepares to die drive that feeling home. Shinkichi watches from the docks, swearing repeatedly in frustrated impotence had to embody how the people of Tokyo felt during the final years of WWII.
After F-86 Sabre Jets drive back Gojira into the water, we are shown the aftermath of the rampage. Little tragic vignettes pull at the heartstrings. A little boy being tested with a Geiger counter by a doctor sadly shaking his head as the boy will die. Then a little girl wailing as her mother dies in triage leads Emiko to break her promise to Serizawa.
As she informs her boyfriend, it turns out Serizawa has developed something called the Oxygen Destroyer that can disintegrate anything organic in water. Confronting the doctor, Ogata ends up on the wrong end of a tussle, failing to persuade Serizawa into helping. A nationally televised girls choir singing over images of the destruction finally succeeds in convincing the tortured scientist into using the weapon. There is a condition – all the research and documentation will be destroyed so that his weapon will not be used the way nuclear weapons were.
This leads to the final confrontation with Gojira under the Tokyo Bay, with Ogata and Serizawa preparing to unleash the Oxygen Destroyer.
The movie has to be watched with an understanding of just how fresh WWII and the atomic bomb drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were. To a national psyche that had broken under an unimaginable defeat, this film must have had a profound emotional impact. This is a serious and grim meditation on the fears that still gripped Japan. By approaching the subject of devastation, nuclear weapons, radiation poisoning, and the dangers of science in an oblique way, the film allowed those things to be addressed. I wonder if it was a cathartic experience for 1954 Japanese audience goers.
I recommend the movie to those who enjoy a good monster film or to those curious as to how the Japanese felt after World War II.
The DVD
While Gojira is restored and remastered, many of the film defects are left in. It appears the desire was to keep as much detail from the film stock in without risking losing any due to over filtering. This also applies with the review of the other disc in the set, Godzilla, King of the Monsters.
Extras include the theatrical trailer and two featurettes: Godzilla Story Development and Making of the Gozilla Suit. Both are narration over rare photos of the production and give great insight into the difficulties of making the movie.
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