Godzilla (1954)
Godzilla has a very heavy, powerful messages that probably resonated more with Japanese audiences than American ones — it’s about the evils of the atomic bomb, and how some weapons are too powerful to ever be used.
But even if you ignore that message, this is a crackerjack monster movie, beautifully crafted. If you associate Godzilla with a guy in a cheap-looking lizard suit, you aren’t thinking of the original Godzilla.
In black and white, with ominous sound design and terrific effects (by 1954 standards), Godzilla is a 70 year-old thriller that lands harder than many of the kitschy and CGI-marred versions that followed. Of all the movies of the 1950s, it may be the most scarily resonant.
It might even be a good double feature with Oppenheimer.
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