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Godzilla (1954 film)

1954 film directed by Ishirō Honda

Godzilla (ゴジラ Gojira) is a 1954 Japanese science fiction Kaiju film in which American nuclear weapons testing results in the creation of a seemingly unstoppable, dinosaur-like beast.

Directed by Ishirō Honda. Written by Ishirō Honda and Takeo Murata.
Incredible, unstoppable titan of terror! (taglines)

Dr. Kyohei Yamane

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  • [to Professor Tanabe] Professor Tanabe...I saw it! A creature from the Jurassic era!
  • Following Odo Island tradition, I propose for the time being that we call this creature Godzilla. We encountered Godzilla on Odo Island. This is a photo of its head. We can estimate that it stands approximately 165 feet tall. Why such a creature would appear in our territorial waters is the next question. It was probably hidden away in a deep sea cave, providing for its own survival, and perhaps others like it. However, repeated underwater H-bomb tests have completely destroyed its natural habitat. To put it simply, hydrogen-bomb testing has driven it from its sanctuary.
  • Godzilla was baptized in the fire of the H-bomb and survived. What could kill it now?
  • All they can think of is killing Godzilla. Why don't they try to study its resistance to radiation? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
  • [last lines] I can't believe that Godzilla was the last of its species. If nuclear testing continues, then someday, somewhere in the world...another Godzilla may appear.

Dr. Daisuke Serizawa

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  • [describing the Oxygen Destroyer] Just a small ball of this substance could turn all of Tokyo Bay into an aquatic graveyard.
  • If used as a weapon, it could lead humanity to exctinction, just like the H-bomb. But I'm determined to find a use for the Oxygen Destroyer that will benefit society. Until then, I won't reveal its existence.
  • Ogata...if the Oxygen Destroyer is used even once, the politicians of the world won't stand idly by. They'll inevitably turn it into a weapon. A-bombs against A-bombs, H-bombs against H-bombs. As a scientist - no, as a human being - adding another terrifying weapon to humanity's arsenal is something I can't allow.
  • Ogata, men are weak animals. Even if I burn my notes, everything is still in my head. As long as I'm alive, who can say I wouldn't be coerced into using it again?

Others

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The Old Fisherman: [describing Godzilla] A giant, terrifying monster. Once it eats all the fish in the sea, it'll come ashore and eat people.
Mother: [to her children, as Godzilla destroys the city around her] We're going to join Daddy! We'll be where Daddy is soon!

Dialogue

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Chief of Emergency Headquarters: Professor, we're really at a loss. If this continues, we'll soon have to close our international shipping lanes. Do you have any ideas? Even the slightest hint would help.
Dr. Kyohei Yamane: Indeed...
Chairman of Diet Committee: Professor Yamane, I'll be blunt. We want to know if there's a way to kill Godzilla.
Dr. Kyohei Yamane: Impossible. Godzilla was baptized in the fire of the H-bomb and survived. What could kill it now? Right now, our priority should be to study its incredible powers of survival.
Dr. Daisuke Serizawa: Ogata, please forgive me. If it could be put to good use, I'd be the first to reveal it to the world. But right now it's nothing but a weapon of mass destruction. Please understand!
Hideto Ogata: I do understand. But if we don't stop Godzilla now, what's to become of us?
Dr. Daisuke Serizawa: Ogata...if the Oxygen Destroyer is used even once, the politicians of the world won't stand idly by. They'll inevitably turn it into a weapon. A-bombs against A-bombs, H-bombs against H-bombs. As a scientist - no, as a human being - adding another terrifying weapon to humanity's arsenal is something I can't allow.
Hideto Ogata: Then what do we do about the horror before us now? Just let it happen? Only you can save us from this tragedy. Even if you use it to defeat Godzilla, how can it be used as a weapon if you don't publish your research?
Dr. Daisuke Serizawa: Ogata, we human beings are weak creatures. Even if I burn my notes, everything's still in my head. As long as I'm alive, who can say I wouldn't be coerced into using it again? If only I'd never invented it!

Taglines

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  • The legend begins...
  • The original, uncut Japanese version—never before released in the US!
    • 2004 Rialto USA release
  • AWESOME!—and then some!
  • It's Alive!
  • spewing flames that scorch the Earth!
  • Incredible, unstoppable titan of terror!
  • Mightiest monster! Mightiest melodrama of them all!
  • Civilization crumbles as its death rays blast a city of 6 million from the face of the Earth!
  • A monster of mass destruction!

Quotes about Godzilla

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Having witnessed the destroyed city of Hiroshima one year after the atomic bomb was dropped, Honda became captivated with the idea of such destructive power in the hands of men. ~ Nikola Budanovic
 
The Shodai-Godzilla is popular with fans who prefer the first, serious tone Godzilla film. ~ Robert Biondi
 
The original 1954 Japanese film, Gojira was iconic, and only made a couple mistakes of any significance. ~ Aron Ra
 
Honda's hope was that somehow this film would inspire people to think about disarmament. I think today if he were still alive, he'd be very disappointed that, you know, nuclear weapons are possessed by more nations than ever before. ~ Steve Ryfle
  • The Shodai-Godzilla is popular with fans who prefer the first, serious-tone Godzilla film. This suit featured a heavy lower body, small arms and a large, round head. The face had pronounced brows while the eyes were completely round with tiny pupils, a feature unique to this costume. The suit also included several features particular to itself and to the Gyakushu-Godzilla: fangs, four toes, a rough underside for the tail and pointed tail tip, and staggered rows of dorsal plates (these features would reappear with the “second” series of Godzilla films from 1984 to present).
    • Robert Biondi, "The Evolution of Godzilla – G-Suit Variations Throughout the Monster King’s Twenty One Films", G-FAN #16 (July/August 1995)
  • Apart from the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, many major cities including Tokyo were targets to extensive bombing campaigns that caused enormous material damage and the killing of between 241,000 and 900,000 people. All of Japan has seen its fair share of destruction and only nine years after the war, the scars were still fresh.
    This is why Honda’s film made such a huge impact. This metaphorical layer of Gojira sparked a debate on the potential dangers of scientific progress. In the film, a scientist character devises a weapon of such destructive power that he becomes scared of its misuse. Even though he lets the device be used on taking down the monster, he burns all of his notes and eventually commits suicide so that the weapon could never be used again. This act clearly illustrates Honda’s opinion on the use of science in military purposes that was shared by many of his countrymen. His decision to create a monster so cruel and unsympathetic towards anyone―including women, children, and the old―indicated that Godzilla was more of a god than a monster.
  • With its images of panic and mass destruction - including spectacular nightly attacks on Tokyo - and its references to nuclear contamination, black rain, bomb shelters and the incineration of Nagasaki, Godzilla struck a chord of terror with Japanese audiences traumatized by recent history and still living with the fear of radiation poisoning.
  • During the U.S.-led occupation, which lasted until 1952, there was a moratorium on any press coverage dealing with the atomic aftermath in any in-depth way. The thinking was that too much attention to the atomic bombings would derail democratization efforts and would undermine U.S. authority, particularly since the U.S. had already begun using Japanese territory as a base from which to launch bombing raids on Vietnam. With the end of the occupation, some activists and journalists started to deal directly with the atomic bombings, but they were not getting much traction. People were more interested in trying to rebuild. But then there was a real game-changer. The U.S. conducted a nuclear test over the Bikini atoll and a Japanese fishing ship, the Lucky Dragon, its crew, and all their fish were exposed to the fallout radiation. When this hit the newspapers, it ignited an enormous scare, as people throughout the country feared that they had been exposed to nuclear radiation through consuming tainted fish. That was in March 1954, shortly before the release of Gojira, the opening scene of which features a fishing crew exposed to an unexplained, destructive flash of light. So, when that hit the big screens, it touched a real nerve with the Japanese public.
  • The basic premise of Gojira, the original 1954 version, is that nuclear testing in the Pacific has awakened a terrible dinosaur which, in its wrath, is bent on destroying Tokyo. But, as Barak Kushner and others have noted, the film isn’t so much about destruction as it is about fear. Look at any screenshot of the movie, and pretty much every single person wears an expression of utter terror. This is true whether you’re talking about the scene where the radio reporter is declaiming into his microphone right up to the moment when the monster crushes him, or you’re talking about quieter scenes with the scientist in his lab.
  • Though the makers of “King Kong” had used stop-motion to create their monster, visual and special effects guru Eiji Tsuburaya knew that method would take too long for the tight production schedule of “Gojira.” The suit his team created, which blended elements of dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus, Iguanodon and Stegosaurus, featured charcoal-colored skin with fibrous scarring similar to that of victims of the atomic explosion. Haruo Nakajima, who played Gojira, based the monster’s movements on his observations of bears, elephants and other zoo animals. Now 85 years old, the actor recently talked to the Wall Street Journal about wearing the famous suit during the film shoot, which took place in the summer: “The temperatures inside reached 140 degrees.”
  • About 9.6 million Japanese flocked to the theaters to see “Gojira” when it was released, out of a population of 88 million. Though initially critics panned the film as too Hollywood-esque, it became an increasingly popular hit, and would go down in history as one of Japan’s greatest movies. Produced near the beginning of a golden age in Japanese film—the same decade saw the release of classics like “Seven Samurai,” “Ikiru” and “Rashomon”—“Gojira” marked Japan’s return to the international stage after World War II, paving the way to its hosting of the Olympics in 1964 and the economic boom that would make it a major player on the world stage again.
  • The original 1954 Japanese film, Gojira was iconic, and only made a couple mistakes of any significance. (1) They killed him in the end, and we saw his body turned to skeleton. Not the best way to begin 60 years worth of sequels. (2) Godzilla was depicted as a dinosaur, and was associated with living trilobites. Even if there was some sort of ‘realm that time forgot’ out in the Pacific somewhere, Trilobites were already extinct before the first dinosaurs, and Godzilla was clearly no dinosaur. The conceptual artists reportedly referenced illustrations of dinosaurs, but that’s not what they rendered. All bi-pedal dinosaurs [Therapods] were digigrade, walking on their toes, like birds, and usually only three or four digits. Godzilla was plantigrade and pentadactyle, (having five digits and walking on the whole foot) just like lizards. It even looks like a lizard, apart from the fact that no reptile has an actual nose or external ears. In a sense, what Toho pictures created was actually an oriental dragon. These tend to mix reptilian and mammalian traits. Amusingly in 1954, Toho made a giant lizard and called it a dinosaur. In 1998, Tristar re-designed Godzilla as a dinosaur, but called it a lizard. Of course that wasn’t the only thing Tristar did wrong. They tried to ruin the monster completely. They took away the only thing that worked in decades of sequels, the look of the monster itself. Then they took away everything that made Godzilla appealing to Kaiju fans, then they tied it down and shot it. Such disrespect. If you’re going to make a movie that already has a fan-base, and they are the ones who will decide whether your film will pay off, respect those fans and the story they’re paying to see.
  • "Godzilla" is Mr. Honda's most personal film by far. And you can see the imprint that the war left on him. He worked personally on the script, you know, and he spoke many, many times over the years about how his desire for this film, while it was an entertainment film, by and large, but his desire was to send a message, not an indictment of America, the monster really - that's another difference between "Godzilla" and American monster movies of the same time period.
    The American monsters usually are stand-ins, as I said, for Cold War enemies. Godzilla is not really a stand-in for America. It is more of an indictment of the nuclear age. And Honda's hope was that somehow this film would inspire people to think about disarmament. I think today if he were still alive, he'd be very disappointed that, you know, nuclear weapons are possessed by more nations than ever before.
  • Godzilla was the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening.
    • Steven Spielberg, as quoted by Don Shay and Jody Duncan (1993) The Making of Jurassic Park, Ballantine Books, p. 15.
  • Godzilla, both the character and the film, are a reflection on the Japanese experience at the end of World War II: destruction beyond imagining, and a lurking sense that “We brought this on ourselves” somehow, even without meaning to. In the film we see both the guilt, the feeling that the punishment perhaps outweighs the sin, and the striving for redemption, all of which are typical for such stories. In some ways, there’s a similar arc in the origin of Spider-Man: radioactive accidental origin, great power used without regard for consequence (personal profit for Spidey), punishment out of proportion (the death of Uncle Ben), and eventual redemption as a hero.
  • Take Godzilla - from a narrative point of view, its origin was other giant beast movies, like King Kong or some of Ray Harryhausen's work. The first Godzilla film was a very dark, deep piece of filmmaking - almost disturbing in a way. But the love the country and the kids felt for the creature literally evolved Godzilla into a national hero.
  • In the original, surprisingly solemn “Godzilla,” the monster was bottom-heavy. “It was the first costume they made, so they really hadn’t worked out the technology of it,” Mr. Tsutsui said in a phone interview. The costume’s framework was wire and bamboo strips, with latex around those elements. “There wasn’t much expressive possibility in that early monster, which I think captured some of the majesty of Godzilla.” With dorsal fins and a large tail, the creature was clearly threatening. Mr. Tsutsui said his makers were influenced by illustrations of dinosaurs, including an article in Life magazine. And Godzilla’s skin reminded Mr. Tsutsui of the scar tissue on the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. In writing the new screenplay, Max Borenstein was influenced by the original. “It had all these really deep and resonant themes about nuclear disaster and the fears of the atomic bomb, which were very present only nine years after World War II,” he said by phone. “I thought, ‘We need to do what they did, use this creature as a metaphor for a fear that’s very primal.' ”
  • The movie served as a strong political statement, representative of the traumas and anxieties of the Japanese people in an era when censorship was extensive in Japan because of the American occupation of the country after the war ended, Tsutsui said. The screen depicted what many could not explicitly say.
 
As the Americans did with many Japanese soldiers coming back to the homeland, they had them land in Hiroshima so the Japanese soldiers would see how thoroughly defeated Japan had been. It had a lifetime impact on him the horrors of what he saw, and he decided that he had an opportunity with this movie to set an important political message. ~ William Tsutsui
  • “As the Americans did with many Japanese soldiers coming back to the homeland, they had them land in Hiroshima so the Japanese soldiers would see how thoroughly defeated Japan had been,” Tsutsui said. “It had a lifetime impact on him the horrors of what he saw, and he decided that he had an opportunity with this movie to set an important political message.”
 
Most Americans think if you left the movie in tears, it was just because you laughed so hard. ~ William Tsutsui
  • When the monster Godzilla, or “Gojira,” appeared before Japanese movie audiences in 1954, many left the theaters in tears.
    The fictional creature, a giant dinosaur once undisturbed in the ocean, was depicted in the original film as having been aggravated by a hydrogen bomb. Its heavily furrowed skin or scales were imagined to resemble the keloid scars of survivors of the two atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Japan nine years earlier to end World War II.
    American audiences, however, had the opposite reaction, finding comedic value in what many interpreted as a cheesy monster movie.
    “Most Americans think if you left the movie in tears, it was just because you laughed so hard,” William Tsutsui, author of “Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters,” told NBC Asian America.
    The stark contrast reflects how Hollywood took the Japanese concept and scrubbed it of its political message before presenting it to American audiences to deflect from the U.S. decision to drop the bombs, critics say.
  • When outlets like The New York Times reviewed the film in 1956, it was described as “in the category of cheap cinematic horror-stuff and it is too bad that a respectable theatre has to lure children and gullible grown-ups with such fare.” The deliberate aesthetic choices that the original filmmakers made on the creature’s keloid-like scars were even interpreted as low-budget Japanese filmmaking with critics at the time likening the monster to a “miniature of a dinosaur made of gum-shoes and about $20 worth of toy buildings and electric trains.”
 
They worked hard to protect the American public from the truth that really the Americans who watched the film never had a chance to respond to it in a meaningful way. ~ Kazu Watanabe
  • Hollywood ultimately sought to sanitize the movie and deflect blame from the U.S. bombings, Tsutsui said.
    “Certainly all the pieces that were in any way, could in any way be construed as critical of the United States or atomic testing, were really stricken from the film,” Tsutsui said. “So the deep political meaning and a lot of the heart of the original 'Godzilla' was cut out for American audiences.”
    Kazu Watanabe, head of film at the Japan Society, had similar thoughts, saying that the U.S. adaptation contributed to the distorted, skewed views that Americans had of Japan at the time.
    “These 'Godzilla' films were not received in the same way in general — in Japan the early films were big budget, major studio films featuring some recognizable stars, while in the U.S. they were more like lowbrow B-movie Japanese monster movie genre fare with funny dubbing that fed into an Orientalist understanding of Japanese culture in America at large,” he said.
    The way in which the movie went through another layer of censorship before it was presented to American audiences, Tsutsui explained, shows just how sensitive people were to the inherent inhumanity of the atomic bombings.
    “They worked hard to protect the American public from the truth that really the Americans who watched the film never had a chance to respond to it in a meaningful way.”
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Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
 
  Japanese films     Shōwa series     Godzilla  (1954) · Godzilla Raids Again  (1955) · King Kong vs. Godzilla  (1962) · Mothra vs. Godzilla  (1964) · Ghidorah, the Three-Headed
  Monster  (1964) · Invasion of Astro-Monster  (1965) · Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster  (1966) · Son of Godzilla  (1967) · Destroy All Monsters
  (1968) · All Monsters Attack  (1969) · Godzilla vs. Hedorah  (1971) · Godzilla vs. Gigan  (1972) · Godzilla vs. Megalon  (1973) · Godzilla vs.
  Mechagodzilla  (1974) · Terror of Mechagodzilla  (1975)  
  Heisei series     The Return of Godzilla  (1984) · Godzilla vs. Biollante  (1989) · Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah  (1991) · Godzilla vs. Mothra  (1992) · Godzilla vs.
  Mechagodzilla II  (1993) · Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla  (1994) · Godzilla vs. Destoroyah  (1995)  
  Millennium series     Godzilla 2000  (1999) · Godzilla vs. Megaguirus  (2000) · Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack  (2001) ·
  Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla  (2002) · Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.  (2003) · Godzilla: Final Wars  (2004)  
  Reiwa series     Godzilla Resurgence  (2016) · Godzilla Minus One  (2023)  
  Foreign films     Adaptations     Godzilla, King of the Monsters!  (1956) · Cozzilla  (1977) · King Kong vs. Godzilla  (1963) · Godzilla 1985  (1985)  
  Co‑productions     Monster Zero  (1970)  
  TriStar Pictures     Godzilla  (1998)  
  Legendary Pictures     Godzilla  (2014) · Godzilla: King of the Monsters  (2019) · Godzilla vs. Kong  (2021) · Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire  (2024)  
  Related films     Rodan  (1956) · The Mysterians  (1957) · Varan the Unbelievable  (1958) · Battle in Outer Space  (1959) · Mothra  (1961) · Gorath  (1962) · Atragon  (1963) · Dogora  (1964)
  · Frankenstein Conquers the World  (1965) · The War of the Gargantuas  (1966) · King Kong Escapes  (1967) · Latitude Zero  (1969) · Space Amoeba  (1970) · The War
  in Space  (1977) · Gunhed  (1989) · Rebirth of Mothra  (1996) · Rebirth of Mothra II  (1997) · Rebirth of Mothra III  (1998)  
  Television     Zone Fighter  (1973) · Ike! Godman  (1972–1973) · Ike! Greenman  (1973–1974) · Godzilla  (1978–1981) · Godzilla Island  (1997–1998) · Godzilla: The Series  (1998–2000) · Monarch: Legacy of Monsters  (2023–present)  
  See also     King Kong  


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