is a 1954 Japanese epic kaiju film directed and co-written by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Produced and distributed by Toho, it is the first film in the Godzilla franchise. The film stars Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura, with Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka as Godzilla. In the film, Japanese authorities deal with the sudden appearance of a gigantic monster, mutated from nuclear bomb testing.
Godzilla entered production after a Japanese-Indonesian co-production collapsed. Tsuburaya originally proposed a giant octopus before the filmmakers decided on a dinosaur-inspired creature. Godzilla pioneered a form of special effects called suitmation in which a stunt performer wearing a suit interacts with miniature sets. Principal photography ran 51 days, and special effects photography ran 71 days.
Godzilla premiered in Nagoya on October 27, 1954, and received a wide release in Japan on November 3. It was met with mixed reviews upon release but was a box-office success, winning the Japanese Movie Association Award for Best Special Effects. The film earned ¥183 million in distributor rentals, making it the eighth-highest-grossing Japanese film of that year. In 1956, Trans World Releasing Corp. released the film in the United States as Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, a heavily re-edited "Americanized" version that toned down many of the film's political themes and integrated new footage of Raymond Burr as the lead. Body doubles, trick photography, and careful editing were utilized to make Burr seem as if he was part of the original Japanese production.
Godzilla spawned a multimedia franchise that was recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest-running film franchise in history; the film and Tsuburaya have also been largely credited for establishing the template for tokusatsu media. The film received reappraisal in later years and is widely regarded as one of the greatest monster films ever made, while its title character is recognised as an icon of international popular culture.
The film was followed by Godzilla Raids Again, released on April 24, 1955.
Plot
In 1954, after the Japanese freighter Eiko-maru is destroyed near Odo Island, another ship—the Bingo-maru—is sent to investigate, only to meet the same fate with few survivors. A fishing boat from Odo is also destroyed, with one survivor. Fishing catches mysteriously drop to zero, blamed by an elder on the ancient sea creature known as "Godzilla". Reporters arrive on Odo Island to further investigate. A villager tells one of the reporters that something in the sea is ruining the fishing. That evening, a storm strikes the island, destroying the reporters' helicopter, and Godzilla, briefly seen, destroys 17 homes, kills nine people, and kills 20 of the villagers' livestock.
Odo residents travel to Tokyo to demand disaster relief. The villagers' and reporters' evidence describes damage consistent with something large crushing the village. The government sends paleontologist Kyohei Yamane to investigate the island, where giant radioactive footprints and a trilobite are discovered. The village alarm bell is rung, and Yamane and the villagers rush to see the monster, retreating after seeing it is a giant dinosaur. Yamane presents his findings in Tokyo, estimating that Godzilla is tall and has evolved from an ancient sea creature, becoming a terrestrial creature. He concludes that Godzilla has been disturbed by underwater hydrogen bomb testing. Debate ensues about notifying the public about the danger of the monster. Meanwhile, 17 ships are lost at sea.
Ten frigates are dispatched to attempt to kill the monster using depth charges. The mission disappoints Yamane, who wants Godzilla to be studied. When Godzilla survives the attack, officials appeal to Yamane for ideas on how to kill the monster. Still, Yamane tells them that Godzilla is unkillable, having survived H-bomb testing, and that it must be studied. Yamane's daughter, Emiko, decides to break off her arranged engagement to Yamane's colleague, Daisuke Serizawa, because of her love for Hideto Ogata, a salvage ship captain. When a reporter arrives and asks to interview Serizawa, Emiko escorts the reporter to Serizawa's home. After Serizawa refuses to divulge his current work to the reporter, he gives Emiko a demonstration of his recent project on the condition that she must keep it a secret. The demonstration horrifies her, and she leaves without mentioning the engagement. Shortly after she returns home, Godzilla surfaces from Tokyo Bay and attacks Shinagawa. After attacking a passing train, Godzilla returns to the ocean.
After consulting international experts, the Japan Self-Defense Forces constructs a tall and 50,000 volt electrified fence along the coast and deploys forces to kill Godzilla. Dismayed that there is no plan to study Godzilla for its resistance to radiation, Yamane returns home, where Emiko and Ogata await, hoping to get his consent for them to wed. When Ogata disagrees with Yamane, arguing that Godzilla's threat outweighs any potential benefits from studying the monster, Yamane tells him to leave. Godzilla resurfaces and breaks through the fence to Tokyo with its atomic breath, unleashing more destruction across the city. Further attempts to kill the monster with tanks and fighter jets fail, and Godzilla returns to the ocean. The day after, hospitals and shelters are crowded with the maimed and the dead, with some survivors suffering from radiation sickness.
Distraught by the devastation, Emiko tells Ogata about Serizawa's research, a weapon called the "Oxygen Destroyer", which disintegrates oxygen atoms and causes organisms to asphyxiate, then dissolve, leaving nothing behind. Emiko and Ogata go to Serizawa to convince him to use the Oxygen Destroyer. Still, he initially refuses, explaining that if he uses the device, the world's superpowers will force him to construct more Oxygen Destroyers as a superweapon. After watching a program displaying the nation's current tragedy, Serizawa finally accepts their pleas. As Serizawa burns his notes, Emiko breaks down crying.
A navy ship takes Ogata and Serizawa to plant the device in Tokyo Bay. After finding Godzilla, Serizawa activates the device and cuts off his air supply, taking the secret of the Oxygen Destroyer to his grave. The Oxygen Destroyer successfully kills Godzilla and disintegrates its body; many mourn Serizawa's death. Yamane believes that if nuclear weapons testing continues, another Godzilla may rise in the future.
Cast
Akira Takarada as Hideto Ogata Momoko Kōchi as Emiko Yamane Akihiko Hirata as Dr. Daisuke Serizawa Takashi Shimura as Dr. Kyohei Yamane Fuyuki Murakami as Dr. Tanabe Sachio Sakai as Hagiwara Ren Yamamoto as Masaji Yamada Toyoaki Suzuki as Shinkichi Yamada Toranosuke Ogawa as the President of the Nankai Shipping Company Hiroshi Hayashi as the Chairman of Diet Committee Seijiro Onda as Oyama, Diet Committee member Kin Sugai as Ozawa, Diet Committee member Shoichi Hirose as a member of the Diet Committee Kuninori Kōdō as the old fisherman Yū Fujiki as Eiko-Maru wireless communications officer Kenji Sahara as a reporter and a partygoer Ishirō Honda as a substation worker Haruo Nakajima as Godzilla, a newspaper reporter, and a substation engineer Katsumi Tezuka as Godzilla and a newspaper deskman
Cast taken from Japan's Favorite Mon-Star, except where cited otherwise.
Themes In the film, Godzilla symbolizes nuclear holocaust from Japan's perspective and has since been culturally identified as a strong metaphor for nuclear weapons. Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka stated, "The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind." Director Ishirō Honda filmed Godzilla's Tokyo rampage to mirror the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and stated, "If Godzilla had been a dinosaur or some other animal, he would have been killed by just one cannonball. But if he were equal to an atomic bomb, we wouldn't know what to do. So, I took the characteristics of an atomic bomb and applied them to Godzilla."
On March 1, 1954, just a few months before the film was made, the Japanese fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryū Maru ("Lucky Dragon No. 5") had been showered with radioactive fallout from the U.S. military's 15-megaton "Castle Bravo" hydrogen bomb test at nearby Bikini Atoll. The boat's catch was contaminated, spurring a panic in Japan about the safety of eating fish, and the crew was sickened, with one crew member eventually dying from radiation sickness. The event led to the emergence of a large and enduring anti-nuclear movement that gathered 30 million signatures on an anti-nuclear petition by August 1955 and eventually became institutionalized as the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. The film's opening scene of Godzilla destroying a Japanese vessel is a direct reference to these events and had a strong impact on Japanese viewers, with the recent event still fresh in the mind of the public.
Academics Anne Allison, Thomas Schnellbächer, and Steve Ryfle have said that Godzilla contains political and cultural undertones that can be attributed to what the Japanese had experienced in World War II and that Japanese audiences were able to connect emotionally to the monster. They theorized that the viewers saw Godzilla as a victim and felt that the creature's backstory reminded them of their experiences in World War II. The academics have also claimed that as the atomic bomb testing that woke Godzilla was carried out by the United States, the film can in a way be seen to blame the United States for the problems and struggles that Japan experienced after World War II had ended. They also felt that the film could have served as a cultural coping method to help the people of Japan move on from the events of the war.
Brian Merchant from Motherboard called the film "a bleak, powerful metaphor for nuclear power that still endures today," and on its themes, he stated: "It's an unflinchingly bleak, deceptively powerful film about coping with and taking responsibility for the incomprehensible, man-made tragedy. Specifically, nuclear tragedies. It's arguably the best window into post-war attitudes towards nuclear power we've got—as seen from the perspective of its greatest victims." Terrence Rafferty from The New York Times said Godzilla was "an obvious gigantic, unsubtle, grimly purposeful metaphor for the atomic bomb" and felt the film was "extraordinarily solemn, full of earnest discussions".
Mark Jacobson from the website of New York magazine said that Godzilla "transcends humanist prattle. Very few constructs have so perfectly embodied the overriding fears of a particular era. He is the symbol of a world gone wrong, a work of man that once created cannot be taken back or deleted. He rears up out of the sea as a creature of no particular belief system, apart from even the most elastic version of evolution and taxonomy, a reptilian id that lives inside the deepest recesses of the collective unconscious that cannot be reasoned with, a merciless undertaker who broaches no deals." Regarding the film, Jacobson stated, "Honda's first Godzilla... is in line with these inwardly turned post-war films and perhaps the most brutally unforgiving of them. Shame-ridden self-flagellation was in order, and who better to supply the rubber-suited psychic punishment than the Rorschach-shaped big fella himself?"