GODZILLA II – Raymond Burr
The plot of the original Godzilla is well known: an American reporter, Steve Martin (Raymond Burr, right), tells a tale in flashback, after Godzilla has leveled Tokyo, leaving him recovering in a hospital. He is reputedly pals with a brilliant scientist named Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), although the two never seem to meet up.
Martin always turns up at key moments in the film, to act as an impassive observer, until he ends up being nearly killed by the beast, along with thousands of others. Eventually, Martin recovers and witnesses Serizawa descend to the depths of Tokyo Bay to destroy Godzilla with a weapon as powerful as the atom bomb, his Oxygen Destroyer.
Gojira is a bit different — obviously there’s no Burr character — and it’s also longer, at 98 minutes to 80 for Godzilla. It opens with a scene of a fishing ship consumed by glowing, boiling water, which then resonated with the Japanese public, as earlier that year a fishing ship had accidentally sailed too close to an American H Bomb test in the Pacific, which caused an international stir.
Much of what was cut out in the American version had references to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, arguments between politicians over Godzilla, references to the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and other scenes that fleshed out the main Japanese characters who were relegated to lesser roles in the American film. But despite what some critics have claimed — that the American version cut these scenes to downplay anti-Americanism — is simply not the case.
Gojira is explicitly anti-war and anti-atomic bomb, not anti-American. When speaking of nuclear technology and consequences, mankind is always referred to as the cause, in general, not any specific nation. This is a central point many critics have missed. Gojira, the monster, is also not so much a metaphor for the bomb, but a variant of it incarnate — thus, it lacks a motive, such as King Kong’s lust for human females or the Rhedosaurus’ hunger.
Additionally, Gojira also focuses on four main characters that give it a human resonance beyond monster films and politics. There is the great actor, Takashi Shimura, a veteran of many Akira Kurosawa films, and just off of his great roles in Ikiru and Seven Samurai, and whose stature in a film like this was equivalent to Gary Cooper or Cary Grant doing a Frankenstein movie.
Shimura plays Dr. Kyouhei Yamane, a paleontologist who becomes the film’s resident monster expert, and, naturally, fears that destroying the creature will be a great loss for science. Of course, he does totally get his geology wrong, stating that the Jurassic Period was only two million years ago (the Jurassic ended 130 million years ago) and that the Age of Dinosaurs ended with it (the last dinosaur died out 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period). That said, along with the often ridiculed dubbing, Godzilla films are recalled with affection for their bad science. Even at four or five, being the All-American dinosaur loving boy I was, I knew this was wrong. That irked me far more than the special effects’ shortcomings.
Yet, Shimura brings his usual humane resonance to the role. In Gojira, this is seen when he tosses his daughter Emiko’s (Momoko Kôchi) suitor Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada) out of his house, after they differ over how to handle Godzilla. Ogata is an oceanographer and diver, and he and Emiko are in love, despite her betrothal to the one eyed Dr. Serizawa, who wears an eye patch, and on first blush seems to be the archetypal mad scientist working alone on a top secret project.
Hirata is great as Serizawa struggles with the fact that his fiancée loves another man who comes to plead with him to use the Oxygen Destroyer to kill Godzilla. It is a wonderfully written and acted scene. First, Serizawa sees his woman, and smiles, then sees Ogata and realizes he’s lost her. Then, when Ogata asks him to use his weapon he knows that Emiko has doubly betrayed him, by divulging the weapon he vowed her to keep secret. After locking himself in his basement laboratory, Ogata breaks in and the two men fight.
We never see the actual fight for Honda lets us only hear it. This sort of touch shows the sort of filmmaker Honda may have become had he nor been relegated to monster movies for most of his career with Toho. All we see are fish in the aquarium where Serizawa had shown the power of his discovery to Emiko. Finally, the scene ends with Serizawa conflicted, but agreeing to use his weapon after hearing devastated schoolgirls singing on tv. He burns his life’s work, though, which prefigures his suicide at film’s end.
Such scenes make critics say the original is far better than the Americanized Godzilla. But the American version, while it severely cuts that scene, compensates amply by not having Serizawa’s suicide so manifestly foreshadowed. In the Japanese film, once we see Serizawa destroy his life’s work, we know his life’s end will not be far behind. These sorts of wise screenplay and directing choices keep the American film not too far behind the original in overall artistic quality.
Also, the fact that the American version plays out from a reporter’s perspective and is told from an unnamed future, naturally allows for a narrative condensation of many of the Japanese scenes because the Martin character sums up many of the plot points brought out by extra characters. The American film would have dragged on too long had this not occurred.
By 1956, when the American version debuted, World War Two was long gone and the Japanese were now our friends against the Red Menace. Thus, the idea that the low-budget filmmakers who added the Burr scenes were censoring a political message is a bit far-fetched, especially considering that the dangers of atomic testing and radiation fallout from the monster figure prominently in both versions. The reasons for the cuts are more easily explained if one imagines what would have happened had Roger Corman gotten a hold of, and reedited, Nosferatu, Metropolis, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or even The Birth of a Nation. Major political and sexual themes would have been lost, but this would be attributable to a lack of artistry, not to Corman’s political or sexual views.
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Tags: Akihiko Hirata, Akira Takarada, Classic Movies, Film Reviews, Godzilla, Raymond Burr
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