A myth is a story that outlives the moment of its birth. Whatever original meaning drove it, a myth has wider resonance. A myth speaks to many audiences.
As it turns out, a skyscraper-sized lizard with radioactive breath isn’t just a comment on American nuclear policy. It’s something broader, something more powerful. Something that has resonated for seven decades, all around the world, and shows no signs of slowing down. It starts with an excellent first appearance.
1954’s Godzilla, directed by Ishiro Honda, and written by Honda with Takeo Murata, is one of the most powerful of all giant-monster movies. Inspired by American films like King Kong, Them!, and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Honda’s Godzilla is a surprisingly humanist document that moves easily between different registers of nightmare.
It opens with the mysterious sinking of a Japanese fishing boats, and then the loss of other ships nearby. Reporters investigate nearby Odo Island, where locals speak of a sea-god called “Godzilla.” That night a briefly-glimpsed monster attacks the island. Distinguished paleontologist Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura, also known for appearing in more Akira Kurosawa films than any other actor) visits Odo, where he finds the monster’s a giant dinosaur who survived from the Jurassic era and was awoken by nuclear testing.
Godzilla later attacks Tokyo, twice, and can’t be stopped. He destroys large swathes of the city, killing by his unstoppable strength and radioactive breath. Yamane has a scientist colleague, Doctor Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), to whom his daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi) is engaged (though Emiko’s taken up with another man). Serizawa has an experimental invention that might destroy Godzilla. But will it also start a new round of great-power escalation?
There’s a lot of solid filmmaking craft in the movie. That starts with Masao Tamai’s cinematography; the movie looks good, with startling lighting and powerful compositions. Beyond that are the still-effective visual effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, and sound work that gives us two of the most famous audio cues in film: the thunder of Godzilla’s footsteps, and the music of his roar.
The acting’s inconsistent, but overall the characters convey a real sense of desperation. Shimura’s a standout as Yamane, haunted by the desire to learn about the mysteries of nature even as nature points out the folly of man. But the weakest part of the movie are the human characters nominally at the forefront.
Hirata has a striking gothic feel as the eyepatch-wearing Serizawa, but has little chemistry with Kochi. There’s a love triangle with Emiko, Serizawa, and a sea captain (Akira Takarada) that’s inessential. And if Serizawa’s invention is established early enough that it doesn’t quite feel like a deus ex machina, it’s still hard to miss how convenient it is to the plot.
The first act tells its story in bits and pieces, in glimpses of half-drowned sailors and coast guard telecommunications rooms. Out of that collage of events characters like Yamane slowly emerge. And the film builds towards giving us Godzilla; but the point is that there’s a narrative tension between this collage of events and the arcs of specific individual characters. If the characters feel like an overlay on top of the spectacle of Godzilla’s attacks, it’s because the logic of the film is drawn towards the scope of generalized death and ruin, and away from the power of individual people to stave off that ruin.
Surprisingly, the core of the film isn’t just Godzilla wreaking havoc. Those are important moments, dramatic and eye-catching and crowd-pleasing. But they work emotionally because after the lavish scenes of destruction we get a good look at the aftermath. We see not just rubble but hospital scenes with the dead and dying.
Godzilla isn’t just a monster, he’s a mass casualty event, overwhelming the surviving medical infrastructure of Tokyo. The story is concerned with infrastructure in many ways, showing large-scale preparations made to deter Godzilla’s attack, then showing in loving detail the big guy tearing apart not only the electrified fence that was supposed to stop him but also train tracks and roads. We have a scene before the attack in which we see a crowd milling across an iron bridge, then later see Godzilla destroying that bridge.
It’s impossible to miss the visual and thematic references to the bombing of Japan during WWII. But at the same time there’s never a sense that you aren’t watching a movie about an atomic monstrosity; the story has its own integrity. It’s a myth that incorporates conscious references to specific themes, but has a broader meaning, and can be read in many ways.
The movie’s about the threat of nuclear weapons. And it’s about a world in which modern safety is an illusion that can fall apart at any moment. And also it’s about a tension between modernity and tradition—Godzilla, as we’re told, is the name of a divinity or spirit worshipped on Odo island.
Myths often take different versions, and are adapted to specific places and cultures. So here; for decades the best-known version of Godzilla was an American re-edit. Godzilla, King of the Monsters was released in 1956 with footage of Raymond Burr and assorted Japanese-American actors spliced into the action, which was cut down from 96 minutes to 80. Burr plays a foreign correspondent who observes events from the original film, a new if unnecessary perspective on the action.
An interesting curio, King of the Monsters gave Godzilla a title Toho Studios has used over the years since. Re-editing didn’t prevent Godzilla from conquering the United States, if among select audiences to start with. Still, in this case the original is more powerful, its references to nuclear disaster more potent and unsettling. Seventy years later, it still lives.