Godzilla [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Inoshiro 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 Collection
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:36:00
Sales rank:	1,219

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

Akira Takarada	Hideto Ogata
Momoko Kôchi	Emiko Yamane
Akihiko Hirata	Daisuke Serizawa
Shimura Takashi	Kyohei Yamane
Fuyuki Murakami	Professor Tanabe
Sachio Sakai	Newspaper Reporter Hagiwara
Ren Yamamoto	Masaji Yamada
Toyoaki Suzuki	Shinkichi Yamada
Toranosuke Ogawa	President of Company
Hiroshi Hayashi	Chairman of Diet Committee
Seijiro Onda	Parliamentarian Oyama
Kin Sugai	Ozawa-san
Haruo Nakajima	Godzilla
Kuninori Kodo	The Old Fisherman
Tadashi Okabe	Prof. Tababe's Assistant
Ren Imaizumi	Radio Operator
Kenji Sahara	Young Lover on Ship
Yasuhisa Tsutsumi	Soldier
Takeo Oikawa	Chief of Emergency Headquarters
Junpei Natsuki	Power Station Engineer
Katsumi Tezuka	Godzilla
Momoko Kochi	Actor
Shizuko Azuma	Woman with Children
Shizuko Higashi	Partygoer
Keiji Sakakida	Mayor Inada
Akira Ifukube	Composer

Technical Credits

Inoshiro Honda

Takeo Murata

Inoshiro Honda	Director,Screenwriter,Screenwriter
Takeo Murata	Screenwriter
Tomoyuki Tanaka	Producer
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.