GODZILLA previously at Film Forum in New York City

ENDED.

“TALL, DARK AND RADIOACTIVE!
NOT JUST A LANDMARK MONSTER FLICK!
A FIRST-RATE MOVIE!
THE NEW 35mm PRINT LOOKS TERRIFIC!”
– John Anderson, Newsday

“MAGNIFICENT! VISONARY! THE GREAT MOVIE MONSTER OF THE POST WORLD WAR II ERA. Godzilla belongs with – and might well trump – Hiroshima Mon Amour and Dr. Strangelove as a daring attempt to fashion a terrible poetry from the mind-melting horror of atomic warfare.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“SMASHING IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD! Time has not diminished this movie’s tabloid docu-horror allure. In the underwater climax, the slow-moving Godzilla is as glacially creepy as the dragon in Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen….
The immortal Takashi Shimura (Seven Samurai) emerges as the indisputable star.”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“THE PRE-EMINENT MOVIE MONSTER OF THE 50’S! Its significance can be glimpsed only in the Japanese version!”
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

“A BRILLIANT RESTORATION! This GODZILLA rips out those unnecessarily re-shot Raymond Burr scenes and the corny voice-overs once added for American audiences, stomping them all into the cutting–room floor like so many Toyotas!”
– New York Magazine

“STILL THE MOST AWESOME! Godzilla is pop culture’s grandest symbol of nuclear apocalypse!”
– Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“IMPASSIONED AND RESONANT! GODZILLA IS THE CITIZEN KANE OF BIG LIZARD MOVIES!”
– Jay Carr, A.M. New York

“A REVELATION! FLAT-OUT FUN!...
50 years after the Big Guy’s first appearance on Tokyo theater screens, Japan’s biggest cultural export finally gets his due in the United States with the release of the original ‘Godzilla’... with a vision as well-imagined and chilling as ‘Dr. Strangelove.’... A crisp print unspools... IT’S TIME FOR A MAJOR RE-APPRAISAL!”
– San Francisco Chronicle

“UNDUBBED, UNCUT AND UNREPENTANT! Godzilla rages on its 50th anniversary with articulated civic anger at nuclear folly, years before Dr. Strangelove. Godzilla in its original form is the atomic age’s fiercest indictment, not of prehistoric beasts loosed from underwater caves, but of all too-human button pushers. A sizzling metaphor for nuclear anxieties!”
– Joshua Rothkopt, Time Out New York

STEP ASIDE, KING KONG! GODZILLA IS BACK!”
– David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor

GODZILLA

VIEW THE TRAILER

(1954, Ishiro Honda, 98 minutes) On a sunny day and calm waters, a Japanese steamer sinks in flames when the sea erupts; a salvage vessel sent to the rescue disappears the same way; exhausted, incoherent survivors babble of a monster. Could it be...? GODZILLA was the biggest budgeted film in Japanese history at that time, costing nearly twice as much as the same studio’s The Seven Samurai, released the same year. An enormous hit, it spawned 50 years of sequels, countless rip-offs, and a new genre: the kaiju eiga, or Japanese monster movie. Sold to an American distributor two years later, it was re-cut, re-arranged and atrociously dubbed, with added scenes (shot in Hollywood) of a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr observing the action from the sidelines. The re-titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters! still became America’s idea of a classic Japanese movie — and of cheesy movie-making.

But the original Japanese GODZILLA is one of the great films by a sci-fi master, Ishiro Honda (Akira Kurosawa’s close friend and occasional second unit director). The U.S. cut ran 20 minutes shorter, with another 20 snipped to make room for Burr, so that nearly a third (about 40 minutes) was shorn. The unrelentingly grim American version excised all of the film’s comic relief (including some astonishing Strangelove-like black humor) and censored its strong anti-H-Bomb message, turning it into a run-of-the-mill monster-on-the-loose picture.

In Japan, the original un-bastardized GODZILLA is regarded as one of the great classics of the cinema. In 1984, the prestigious film journal Kinema Junpo rated it among the top 20 Japanese films of all time. In 1989, a published survey of 370 Japanese movie critics, Nihon Eiga Besuto 150 (Best 150 Japanese Films), ranked Godzilla the 27th greatest Japanese feature ever made.

The real (human) star of the movie is Takashi Shimura (best known for his Kurosawa roles, including the leader of The Seven Samurai and the doomed man of Ikiru), as a revered paleontologist who insists that Godzilla must be studied, not destroyed (he’s in the minority). This first Godzilla is truly terrifying — a 30-story Jurassic behemoth intent on destroying an exquisitely detailed miniature Tokyo — a tour de force by special effects genius Eiji Tsubaraya. Tsubaraya’s use of “suitmation” — the often-belittled “actor in monster suit” method — was due to time and budget restraints, but, in concert with noirish cinematography, his low-tech approach is still as thrilling as ever. This print also features new subtitles by Bruce Goldstein and Michie Yamakawa.

A TOHO FILM
A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE
2:45, 6:25, 10:05

GODZILLA, GOJIRA and the character design are registered trademarks of Toho Co. Ltd.


	JAPAN’S FAVORITE MON-STAR (The Unauthorized Biography of Godzilla) by Steve Ryfle