To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the original Toho Godzilla by IshirĂ´ Honda, Rialto Pictures will be releasing a restored version of the film at the fifth TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, followed by a U.S. release beginning at the New York’s Film Forum, April 18th to 24th.
60th Anniversary of Landmark
Monster Movie
New Restoration of Uncut Version
to premiere at TCM Classic Film Festival in April followed by national release
from Rialto Pictures
A new restoration of GODZILLA:
THE JAPANESE ORIGINAL, the monster classic that has spawned six decades of
sequels, imitations, and remakes, will debut April 12 at the fifth TCM Classic
Film Festival in Hollywood, followed by a national release beginning at New
York’s Film Forum, April 18-24.
GODZILLA was originally released
here in 1956 as Godzilla: King of the Monsters, an atrociously cut, dubbed and
re-edited version that inserted American actor Raymond Burr into the action;
only an hour was used of the original’s 98 minute running time. Burr does not appear in the original, uncut
version, which has an all-Japanese cast including Kurosawa regular Takashi
Shimura, who the very same year appeared as leader of the Seven Samurai.
As directed by IshirĂ´ Honda, with
special effects by the legendary Eiji Tsuburaya, GODZILLA: THE JAPANESE
ORIGINAL is much darker in tone than the dumbed-down U.S. release version,
which entirely eliminated the original’s underlying theme: in the Japanese version, the monster is
clearly a metaphor for the nuclear menace and the film itself a cry for world peace
and disarmament. The American version
also cut out all of the original’s astonishing Strangelove-like black humor.
The original GODZILLA holds up as
one of the greatest science fiction/monster films ever made, boasting
still-impressive special effects, as the radiation-breathing prehistoric
monster, awakened after millennia by Hydrogen Bomb testing – and impervious to
repeated shelling by the Japanese army – wreaks destruction on Tokyo.
GODZILLA became Toho Studio’s #1
box office hit of 1954 (its #2 that year was Seven Samurai) and was so popular
worldwide that the company has since produced nearly 30 sequels and remakes; a
statue near Toho headquarters in Tokyo pays tribute to their most valuable
property. 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.
A new American version of
Godzilla from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, directed by Gareth Edwards
(2010’s Monsters), will be released nationally May 16.
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