By Peter H. Brothers, Author of Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda

Read part 1 here.

Contemporary movies are chalk-full of tremendously-spectacular “in-your-face” effects reflecting the moviegoing public’s current obsession with CGI high-tech visuals that are stimulating to the senses but hollow for the soul — quickly seen and quickly forgotten, all polish and no spit — but Gojira has a lot of spit.  The film has a primitive and elemental quality to it like a rough-hewn handmade tatami mat, brutally frank and direct. The fact that there are occasional blemishes found in some of the effects work does nothing to destroy the spirit of the dedication, ingenuity and professional integrity that went into its production.  If a movie could be a meal, then Gojira is a porterhouse steak, bone and all.

In America the film was altered substantially (deliberately or not, toning down the Atomic Bomb connection) to allow time for an American actor to make the film more acceptable for Western viewers as the distributor, Embassy Pictures, felt there was no way Americans would attend an all-Japanese production only 15 years after Pearl Harbor.  Even so, director/editor Terry Morse handled the film with extraordinary care, giving it the dignity owed to such a masterwork.  His version retains the spirit, if not the letter, of the Japanese original (as it happens all of Ifukube’s brilliant score was retained; this would not always be the case when the films were mutilated for their American distribution).

Sadly the film’s serious message was disavowed by critics both in Japan and in America, mainly due to the fact that they considered it merely a monster movie not worthy of serious consideration; on the other hand, many who were able to see beneath the surface and discover the moral of the movie now give it praise.  Strangely, the fact that the film was a great commercial success has worked against it, spawning as it has over two dozen sequels of inferior quality that have at the very least cheapened its original intent while at the same time cashing in on a major merchandising market.

For his part, Honda felt most theatergoers missed the point by getting caught up in the visuals, often musing that the kids would eventually get it once reaching adulthood and he was right, yet it seemed Honda wanted it both ways: by not making a direct statement and discreetly avoiding the real issue, he still made a picture so stunning it succeeds as entertainment thereby distracting those from its moral compass. Whether or not he succeeded depends on the interpretation found by the individual viewer; some do get the serious social commentary while others are simply captivated by the intriguing story and still others just dig the fantasy element.  Perhaps because of these varying layers the film ages like a fine sake, getting better with each viewing.

Simply put, Gojira has always been and always will be more than just a mere monster movie which is the story about the purgation of a man’s soul: a tortured scientist trying to come to terms with his invention of a terrible device that will remove all life from the sea.  Unlike Dr. Frankenstein, who had deliberately created life, Serizawa has inadvertently invented a new kind of death, and his moral dilemma is so oppressively onerous that he must share his secret with the only person he trusts in the whole world, his betrothed Emiko.  In Gojira’s demise, Serizawa sees his own way out of a soul-wrenching decision that can only be achieved by self-immolation, beautifully realized by actor Akihiko Hirata’s sensitive and vulnerable performance as Serizawa, surely the most memorable performance in any Godzilla film.

Momoko Kochi successfully wrestles with the role of a woman torn between the love of two men and the bitter knowledge that she alone can save the world from its terrible fate by revealing to Serizawa’s rival the secret of the Oxygen Destroyer.  In doing so she double-crosses Serizawa, going back on her word and wounding his honor in such a way that the consequences are irrevocable.

Akira Takarada turns in a remarkable performance for one just barely out of his teens; his portrayal of Ogata is different from the stereotypical western “hero”: rather than resenting Serizawa, Ogata is genuinely sympathetic and understanding of the scientist’s predicament; it thus becomes much more difficult for him to reproach the great scientist and when he does, Serizawa, whose honor and pride at the moment means more to him than whole of civilization refuses to cooperate, walks out and slams the door; it is a very human impulse.

Another human moment occurs when Ogata is prepared to ask Dr. Yamane for his daughter’s hand in marriage, urged on by the instinct that very few of them will likely live out the evening, but Ogata blows it by getting sidetracked by Yamane’s half-aloud lament that Gojira should be left alone by the military and left alive to study.  Ogata, with the pride of the Japanese Navy searing through his veins, is baited by this statement so he forgets himself and instead gets into a debate he cannot possibly win, only succeeding in angering Yamane who then summarily asks Ogata to leave (the final shot in this sequence, of two canaries in a cage, is symbolic of the trapped and powerless young lovers).

And Takashi Shimura’s interpretation of the brooding and passive Dr. Yamane is a study in fine acting as well, the exact opposite from Cecil Kellaway’s cheery paleontologist in Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. The tucking in of Yamane’s tie as he speaks to the Diet – which very well could have been Shimura’s own idea – is another example of the human moments that color the film.

There are moments of dark irony as well:

• A young man and a woman traveling on a commuter train bemoan the fact that Gojira is disrupting their lives (with comments made regarding Nagasaki and the air-raid shelters deleted from the American version). That very evening, in an attempt to escape their troubles by dining and dancing on a cruise ship, they come face-to-face with the fiend.
• Nankai steamship employee Masaji will help rescue three men in his first encounter with Gojira; soon afterward he himself will be the lone survivor after Gojira destroys his own ship until the monster finally kills him in his third encounter on Odo Island.
• A broadcaster commenting on Gojira’s destruction of the TV tower results in the man announcing his own death.

There are a number of reasons to appreciate Gojira‘s role in film history but more precisely its enormous impact on the Japanese film industry.  Gojira was the first Japanese film to be made under a security lid and was also the first to be storyboarded, as well as being the studio’s most-expensive and daring production at the time, but more important still is that before Gojira, all movies made in Japan were indigenous products, domestic stories made only for domestic audiences where stories involving monsters were not to be taken seriously as authentic living creatures.  The resultant production that premiered on November 3, 1954, became not only the first film in the longest running movie series originating from a single studio and the birth of a popular genre, but was the greatest international success in the history of Japanese filmmaking and remains to this day the most famous Japanese film of all time.

It was also a gamble without precedent, as no such film had ever been made in Japan before and there was no guarantee that Tsuburaya could pull off the heretofore untried special effects; nor was there any way of knowing how Japanese audiences would react to a thinly-disguised version of the horrific events befalling them during the war.  As it happened, Gojira drew in nearly 10 million Japanese viewers (ironically nearly the very same number of Japanese who died in the war) who were able to deal with images that were now a part of their national psyche.  Indeed the cathartic effect the film had was quite possibly the main reason for Gojira’s success; the horrific sufferings of the past could be addressed and soothed by the most horrific fiction of the present.

Gojira survives today as a great work of art due to the endeavors of the people who created it, many of whom were directly involved or at the very least profoundly affected by the traumatic events of those years.  This was a supreme collaborative effort pieced-together by those whose lives were forever changed by the specter of the mushroom cloud, including such future luminaries as special effects photographer Sadamasa (Teisho) Arikawa, who once said that “Gojira was very much a picture of its time.”

And times do change. Sometimes the original intent of a film can be misinterpreted or even lost as years pass, and just as the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were watershed moments in the archives of the 20th century, representing the initial gaze into a frightening new world of terror, Gojira will forever remain a portal to that distant past, a past many Americans would like to forget and that the Japanese can never forget.  Gojira was not only the world’s first anti-nuclear film but the finest cinematic recreation of the mood and desperation of a civilian population decimated by a war.

As a film, Gojira deserves to be given its due as one of the most outstanding pieces of entertainment ever produced in Japan or, for that matter, anywhere else. The viewing of the original picture sans Raymond Burr is a revelation to many.  Pound for pound, scene-by-scene, heightened by the sum of its parts, it is every inch a film made to enlighten as well as entertain by cinematic craftsmen of the highest order deeply committed to making a statement in celluloid of their world as they knew it and as they feared future generations might one day never know.

Moreover it stands as the greatest achievement of a team that would collaborate on many more fantastic films, including the producer who needed a last-minute replacement, to a special effects visionary who wanted to make his own King Kong, to an iconoclastic musician and, ultimately, a sensitive and thoughtful director who made more films seen by more people all over the world than any other Japanese filmmaker, and one who never wanted to see another mushroom cloud during his lifetime or anyone else’s: Ishirō Honda.

That is Gojira’s true legacy, and it should never be forgotten. ✪

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Peter H. Brothers is the author of the new book Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men – The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda (AuthorHouse).  Check out Peter’s site for an extended analysis of both Gojira and Honda’s Abominable Snowman.