12-07-2018, 03:44 PM
I stumbled across this on some xfinity station while staying at my mom's last Wednesday and got thoroughly engrossed, but it was getting late so I didn't finish it until last night, courtesy of Amazon Prime. This is the Japanese original, not the re-edited U.S. version with Raymond Burr which came out two years later.
The original still holds up. There's this vintage feel because it captures Japan in the mid 50s. The effects are much more solid than in later films, and there's some huge crowd scenes, plus the ocean depth charges, that make you go wow when you consider that it's real, not some CGI effect. It's got that B&W style with lighting, with ample use of Venetian blinds to create slats of light across the actors. Director Honda feels heavily derivative of Kurosawa, and this is exacerbated by Takashi Shimura's lead role, who will forever be the lead Samurai from the Seven Samurai to me, as well as the lead in Ikiru (both films were later although Seven Samurai was also '54). The film is dark, with much in shadow, which only accentuates Godzilla's textured rubber skin. Godzilla looks wet and sinister. Now it's got some sepia shades and I kept thinking that it needs a restoration where the blacks are blackened as much as could be and the images pass through a low-fi filter to make them more stark. The sound of the film is awesome - that Godzilla roar - that plodding soundtrack (composer Ifukube scored many kaiju flicks along with some later Zatoichi flicks). And I swear, Godzilla looks bigger and badder in the original than in any of the films that followed. My only issue with the film is the end. I've never liked the final 10 mins. Godzilla is defeated by a giant bubbler ball from a neurotic one-eyed underground scientist? Whatev man. It's so anticlimactic.
The original still holds up. There's this vintage feel because it captures Japan in the mid 50s. The effects are much more solid than in later films, and there's some huge crowd scenes, plus the ocean depth charges, that make you go wow when you consider that it's real, not some CGI effect. It's got that B&W style with lighting, with ample use of Venetian blinds to create slats of light across the actors. Director Honda feels heavily derivative of Kurosawa, and this is exacerbated by Takashi Shimura's lead role, who will forever be the lead Samurai from the Seven Samurai to me, as well as the lead in Ikiru (both films were later although Seven Samurai was also '54). The film is dark, with much in shadow, which only accentuates Godzilla's textured rubber skin. Godzilla looks wet and sinister. Now it's got some sepia shades and I kept thinking that it needs a restoration where the blacks are blackened as much as could be and the images pass through a low-fi filter to make them more stark. The sound of the film is awesome - that Godzilla roar - that plodding soundtrack (composer Ifukube scored many kaiju flicks along with some later Zatoichi flicks). And I swear, Godzilla looks bigger and badder in the original than in any of the films that followed. My only issue with the film is the end. I've never liked the final 10 mins. Godzilla is defeated by a giant bubbler ball from a neurotic one-eyed underground scientist? Whatev man. It's so anticlimactic.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse