{"id":47431,"date":"2004-05-07T14:12:43","date_gmt":"2004-05-07T18:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=47431"},"modified":"2020-04-25T14:17:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T18:17:38","slug":"review-godzilla-1954","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2004\/05\/07\/review-godzilla-1954\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: GODZILLA (1954)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>When first released in the United States in 1957, the Japanese monster film Godzilla<\/strong> found itself trimmed of 40 minutes of footage, with a new twenty minutes added featuring actor Raymond Burr, and much of its intended subtext missing as well. Now nearly 50 years after the film\u2019s original Japanese premiere, Godzilla<\/strong> is finally able to be seen in the United States as it was originally intended by its creators.<\/p>\n

When several fishing boats are mysteriously destroyed the military seems to be unable to supply an explanation. However, the cause reveals itself soon enough. It is 150 foot tall prehistoric creature which Professor Yamane (Takashi Shimura, who would go on to appear in Akira Kurosawa\u2019s Hidden Fortress<\/strong> (1958) and Yojimbo<\/strong> (1961)) hypothesizes has been displaced from its native underwater habitat by H-Bomb testing. Named Godzilla after an old fishermen\u2019s legend about a deep-sea demon, the creature goes on a rampage across the country with military finding itself unable to stop it. However, Yamane\u2019s daughter Emiko\u2019s fianc\u00e9e Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) has developed a weapon known as the Oxygen Destroyer, which could bring an end to Godzilla\u2019s destruction. However Serizawa is afraid that revealing his weapon to the world will only escalate the arms race among the countries of the world.<\/p>\n

The public\u2019s perception of Godzilla<\/strong> is mostly colored by the series later entries that often featured the monster squaring off against some other mutated beast in a fight that levels cities. But the original 1954 version is far darker than the Saturday afternoon matinee material the series would evolve into. Inspired by the national uproar following an incident in which fallout from a Bikini atoll atomic test rained down on a Japanese fishing boat, Toho Pictures producer Tomoyuki Tanaka conceived of a film featuring a radiation spawned monster that would embody the horror of nuclear war. But as the cautionary tale was developed with director Ishiro Honda, Godzilla soon grew to encompass all war. A shot of the Tokyo skyline burning recalls the fire bombing of Japan during World War II. As Godzilla approaches a mother cradles her young children saying \u201cSoon we\u2019ll be with Daddy.\u201d Scenes of hospitals and make shift triage centers are filled with people suffering from radiation burns and children crying over lost parents recall the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While some of the special effects work is undeniably low tech, these scenes are still powerful to today\u2019s audience. One can only imagine what feelings they stirred in 1954 Japanese audiences when such horrors were only a few years in their past. Such a powerful anti-war subtext ranks this film right next to Robert Wise\u2019s The Day The Earth Stood Still<\/strong> (1951) as one of the most important genre films of the decade.<\/a><\/p>\n

The human element is not overlooked. The love triangle between Serizawa, Emiko (Momoko Kochi) and the man she really loves Naval officer Ogata (Akira Takarada) is more developed in this version and forms the emotional center of the film, giving a human drama to play out against the backdrop of Godzilla\u2019s devastation. Although played fairly understated, it\u2019s still strong enough to fuel the emotional component of the film\u2019s finale. But it is Yamane who provides the film\u2019s moral core when, in a line trimmed from the original American release, he warns that the horror of Godzilla, and what he represents, has not be totally vanquished. \u201cAnother Godzilla will appear, somewhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When first released in the United States in 1957, the Japanese monster film Godzilla found itself trimmed of 40 minutes of footage, with a new twenty minutes added featuring actor Raymond Burr, and much of [click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[231],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-review","7":"tag-godzilla"},"aioseo_notices":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[2],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47431"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=47431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}