Godzilla 1954

To celebrate the new Godzilla film coming out, and because I like to talk about kaiju whenever I can, I'm going to do a review of each of the films until the screening.
The 1st film of the series, called simply "Godzilla' came out in 1954, just 9 years after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which (forgive the comparison) would be like coming out with a movie dealing with the fall out of 9/11 in 2010 in the US. What strikes me every time about this film is that while they speak heavily about the dangers of nuclear weapons, there was never any direct blame placed on America, instead putting the blame on the shoulders of all mankind. 
The name "Godzilla" is kind of an Americanized version of the pronunciation of the original name "Gojira." Originally a combination of the words "gorilla" and "kujira" (whale in Japanese) the actual origin of the name has a few conflicting stories from "they made it up on the spot" to there was a big dude called Gojira at the studio. I personally think if someone had this nickname before the movies came out, we probably would have heard of him. 
The three people most important to Godzilla's creation (or to blame depending on your opinions) would be Tomoyuki Tanaka, who did the bulk of the writing, (EDIT: Tanaka is producer, Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata wrote)  Ishiro Honda, who would direct the overall film, and Eiji Tsubaraya, who is the grand master of the special effects. Also of note is Akira Ifukube, who wrote all of the score. 
Visually the movie it's self is very stark, not just because it's black and white, but because it was filmed somewhat like a documentary. There are no big fantastical set pieces, no unrealistic harrowing action, they even use actual footage of victims from the bombings and it looks to be part of the movie. 
The film works as more of an ensemble piece without any specific main character we follow all the way through. The heart of the story is a young woman named Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kochi) who was betrothed at a young(er) age to a prominent scientist Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata, work that eye patch) but has fallen in love with a ship captain named Hideto Ogata, (Akira Takarada) What's interesting about this, even by today's standards, it's not traditional in the fact that Dr. Serizawa isn't a bad man keeping the lovely lady from the handsome suitor. Nor is it the type of triangle where she doesn't know to whom her heart belongs, (the worst kind of love triangle because unless you're Escaflowne, we all know where the character is going) she's in love with another man, but she respects the kind, though brooding (heeeey) scientist. We the audience feel for him because he's a good man, he just isn't the one. 
The more plot functional part would be Dr. Kyohei Yamane, (Takashi Shimura) who is Emiko's father, sent to an island to investigate all of the ship disappearances in the area. It's through him that we start to discover as an audience what threat is looming over Japan. They find massive footprints that contain recently dead trilobites, meaning whatever made the prints is from millions of years before, and for even more added enjoyment, the damn things are radioactive. 
It's on this island that we meet Godzilla for the first time face to face, unfortunately he's a less than convincing hand puppet with oddly placed immobile arms. He kind of reminds me of Kermit. 

Luckily, the film doesn't waste a lot of time on having Dr. Yamane convince the government that Godzilla exists, there are pictures, witnesses done. Instead, the focus shifts from non belief to inaction. There are interesting, and almost frighteningly realistic scenes of politicians who would rather argue about what to do than actually do something. Some things never change I guess. 
They eventually decide to kill the beast (it'll totally work, right?) with conventional methods, which doesn't please Dr. Yamane because he would rather study it, the first in a long line of similar stories of people fighting over the ethics of killing giant indestructible beasts. 
It's interesting to point out here that up to this point Godzilla has not attacked Japan, or gone out of his way to kill anything not directly in his path. Something little Paul, having been used to other kaiju films, never quite put together until recently. Godzilla does indeed attack Japan, but it's mostly a walk through to see what's up after they drop some depth charges on him. 
In his second appearance, it's not until they attempt to electrocute him that he starts really breakin' shit and using his flame breath. And wow, when he does it's gorgeous. Once they let loose with the effects, they really let loose. Using any and all things available to them. Animation to show his glowing dorsal plates, puppet controlled closeups, my favorite is actually the giant electricity towers what were actually constructed out of wax then melted under hot studio lights to simulate white hot metal melting. 
Once we finally see the beautiful suit, we see that Godzilla himself self has a jagged rough look, which is actually inspired by burn scars. Yes, that's right, Godzilla has rough skin like that because it's meant to be 3rd degree burns over 100% of it's body. Honorable mention goes to the googly looking eyes on the suit it's self. The combination of low lighting and black and white turns what could have looked really silly into the deathly stare of an emotionless monster. 

It's here and the scenes afterward that the movie really resonates. The destruction combined with the stark lighting and the somber music ends up being a very very long scene. It's beautiful and haunting, and really drives home the fact that this is a terrible event that's leaving thousands dead or homeless. In particular is a scene with a woman holding her young children with the glow of impossibly large flames lighting them while she comforts her children by saying that they'll "be with daddy soon." This scene has always stuck with me. This is a frightening window into what it's like to be a small person caught up in such great violence, be it war or giant monsters.
The aftermath switches gears from horrific imagery to more tragic. The scene of the girls choir singing their insanely beautiful and depressing song is especially powerful, their voices carry more emotion and sadness than any written line can, and it's used to incredibly great effect leading Dr. Serizawa to make his final decision. The music in this situation is so haunting and sad, but I almost feel like there's a bit of an accusatory nature to it. We are all at fault for Godzilla, not just one country, or one event, and similarly we are all at fault for the evils of today. 
Godzilla is a cautionary tale full of imaginative, haunting imagery, and I think anyone interested in cinema or even history and political climate through art should see this film. Please, please, please just watch the original Japanese with subtitles. 
This film not only did extremely well in theatres, but launched and entire genre that, while not going "strong" is still going on tv and film. In fact this one in particular has been released by no less than the Criterion Collection. It's definitely something I'd recommend not just as a monster movie, but a very well made (if not heavy and depressing) 60 year old film.