Dir. Motoyoshi Oda
78 Minutes
Japan
1955
Starring: Hiroshi Koizuma, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura
***/*****
The first appearance and subsequent success of Godzilla shook Japanese audiences and inspired Toho to eagerly get a sequel in theaters a mere six months later. With Ishirō Honda busy working on another project and Toho not willing to wait (he would eventually return to this realm of filmmaking), Motoyoshi Oda was hired to take the reigns. Oda's interests (or perhaps Toho's interests) are evident from the start of the film, but his handling of the larger action sequences (of which there are many and of much longer length than its predecessor) is quite effective and elevates the creepiness of the concept of giant monsters fighting each other as its foundation over the tragedy of destruction.
Godzilla's reappearance is not so much a "return", but explained away as a dreaded "second Godzilla', discovered on an island in combat with new beast Anguirus. While far lower on the human drama elements than Honda's original, there is an interesting undercurrent of both collective trauma of the earlier attack and strategic planning of using what was learned from the previous incident (both militantly and socially) to great advantage. This is somewhat abandoned for the pleasure of watching Godzilla and Anguirus duke it out (the battle aspect of giant monsters taking over the emphasis on destruction and horror), and Oda gives these sequences a nice unsettling tone to the point where the sighs of relief had by the Tokyo inhabitants that Godzilla is "changing course" and not headed their way is almost shared by the audience. And there is little destruction in the film, with the spectacle relegated to "low-stakes" environments such as an uninhabited island or the middle of the ocean (and a mid-film sequence of Godzilla trudging through the ocean while being attacked by military jets is actually a bit creepy in its quiet, lacking the large musical crescendo's of the originals famous score).
The movie starts to meander after its first half, with some lackluster "protagonists" appearing for some due diligence, and the whole thing would have been better if it just saw its success as focused in two areas: the giant monsters, and the community rising against them. But this fairly unpopular entry in the Godzilla canon certainly has its positives, transitioning from Honda's allegorical commentary and moving into the more spectacle focused mode of the franchise.
April 13th, 2020
Part of the ongoing Godzilla Project, notes on selected films in the Godzilla franchise.