Godzilla [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Ishir? Honda, Ishiro Honda, Inoshiro Honda

Overview

One of the longest-running series in film history began with Ishiro Honda's grim, black-and-white allegory for the devastation wrought on Japan by the atomic bomb. As his visual metaphor, Honda uses a 400-foot-tall mutant dinosaur called Gojira, awakened from the depths of the sea as a rampaging nuclear nightmare, complete with glowing dorsal fins and fiery, radioactive breath. Crushing ships, villages, and buildings in his wake, Gojira marches toward Tokyo, bringing all of the country's worst nightmares back until an evil more terrible bomb -- capable of sucking all the oxygen from the sea -- returns the monster to its watery grave. The original film is chilling, despite some rather unconvincing man-in-a-suit special effects, and brimming with explicitly stated anti-American sentiment. All of that was removed for the U.S. release directed by Terry Morse. It was replaced with bad dubbing and tedious added footage starring Raymond Burr. The resulting edit was just another monster movie, but was still popular enough to assure future Toho Studios monster films a wide American release.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/24/2012
UPC:	0715515089418
Original Release:	1954
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:36:00
Sales rank:	1,533

Special Features

Audio Commentary for both movies by Film Historian David Kalat; ; New Interviews with Actors Akira Takarada and Haruo Nakajima and Special Effects Technicians Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai; ; Interview with legendary Godzilla score composer Akira Ifukube; Featurette detailing Godzilla's photographic effects, introduced by Special Effects Director Koichi Kawakita and Special Effects Photographer Motoyoshi Tomioka; ; New Interview with Japanese-film critic Tadao Sato; ; The Unluckiest Dragon, an illustrated audio essay featuring Historian Greg Pflugfelder describing the tragic fate of the fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryu Maru, and real-life event that inspired Godzilla; ; Trailers for Godzilla and Godzilla, King of the Monsters

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Takashi Shimura	Dr. Kyohei Yamane
Akira Takarada	Naval Salvage Officer Hideto Ogata
Akihiko Hirata	Dr. Daisuke Serizawa
Fuyuki Murakami	Dr. Tabata
Sachio Sakai	Reporter Hagiwara
Toranosuke Ogawa	President of Nankai Shipping Company
Ren Yamamoto	Masaji
Takeo Oikawa	Chief of Emergency Headquarters
Miki Hayashi	Chairman of Diet Committee
Seijiro Onda	Mr. Oyama/Member of Parliament
Toyoaki Suzuki	Shinkichi
Kokuten Kodo	Gisaku--Oto Island Patriarch
Frank Iwanaga	Security Officer Tomo Iwanaga
Kin Sugai	Miss Ozawa/Member of Parliament
Tadashi Okabe	Reporter Killed in Tower
Ren Imaizumi	Radio Operator
Junpei Natsuki	Power Substation Engineer
Kenji Sahara	Man Aboard Ship
Ryosaku Takasugi	Godzilla
Katsumi Tezuka	Godzilla/Hagiwara's Editor
Haruo Nakajima	Godzilla/Newspaperman
Momoko K?chi	Emiko Yamani
Momoko Kochi	Actor
Raymond Burr	Steve Martin
Akira Ifukube	Composer

Technical Credits

Ishir? Honda

Takeo Murata

Shigeru Kayama

Ishir? Honda	Screenwriter,Screenwriter
Tomoyuki Tanaka	Producer
Shoji Okawa	Stunts
Kuichiro Kishida	Special Effects
Hiroshi Mukoyama	Special Effects
Eiji Tsuburaya	Special Effects
Akira Watanabe	Special Effects
Takeo Murata	Screenwriter
Shigeru Kayama	Screenwriter
Hisashi Shimogawa	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

While you might have a hard time convincing most people, Inoshiro Honda's Gojira -- the film whose success launched the long-running Godzilla series and helped to make Japanese monster movies one of the nation's best known exports -- is actually an intelligent and somber parable about the legacy and consequences of the atomic bomb, told from the perspective of a people who had witnessed its impact firsthand only nine years earlier. Unfortunately, the film's serious intentions are muffled in the American release version, which has not only been dubbed and re-edited, but features new footage of Raymond Burr as American newsman Steve Martin (a name that started getting laughs of its own about 22 years after the film arrived in the States), acting alongside a handful of Asian extras who keep popping up in increasingly surreal contexts. While the U.S. cut still holds on to some of the original's dark tone, it mostly trivializes a film that deserves better; while still a low-budget monster movie, Honda's original Gojira manages to convey a genuine respect for the gravity of the issues it raises (leaving little doubt that its fire-breathing monster is, in this context, a stand-in for the bombs which leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki), as well as a compassion for both the victims and the emotionally wounded people who left scars upon their nation while fighting the menace. If the opportunity to see Honda's original Japanese-language version of Gojira presents itself, it's a simple but powerful work well worth your time, while the Americanized cut manages to save the cut-rate spectacle but leave out what gave the original film its resonance.