Throughout the school year, FSU's Student Life Cinema will be screening classic films, and thus far in college, I've found each experience to be intriguing for varying reasons. Every film is a different experience, from The Third Man to Modern Times to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Godzilla Attacks Tallahassee
Most of the time, when you think of Godzilla, the name conjures either images of camp japanese monster movies or the worst decision Matthew Broderick's agent ever advised him to make.
The campus cinema I work for at FSU recently screened the franchise-spawning 1954 original film, retranslated and remastered in its director's cut, not the version seen by American audiences for the last half century.
When Godzilla was acquired for American release, the Americans decided they could improve it (a trend throughout history in various contexts) by making it more palatable to the target audience. This process involved the shooting of new scenes with Raymond Burr that, combined with a mistranslated subtitle track, vastly changed the tone and storyline of the film.
Lawrence of Arabia it's not, but Godzilla deserves a fair share of credit for being a great deal more socially relevant than previously thought. The movie carries an intensely anti-nuclear, anti-proliferation message that gets lost a bit in a late section of the movie where scifi melodrama grabs the wheel and takes on a lazy drive down denoument lane.
The most striking part of seeing a classic film with an audience made up of mostly college students is the reaction you hear around you. Whether surprised, tearily touched, or tickled giddy, almost everyone around you has never seen the film before.
The line for Godzilla's first show, about an hour in advance.
In the case of a movie like Casablanca (shown last year) or Singin' in the Rain (coming soon), there is a chunk of the audience who know and love the film, having seen it over the years, whether young or old. Godzilla stood apart this past Sunday and Monday, as I knew for a fact I was one of two people who had seen this restored cut of the movie.
It does drag in parts, but so many moments in the film still really went over with the audience. In particular, a moment where a young Japanese woman calls out members of Parliament for not dealing with the Godzilla catastrophe drew a flood of snickers throughout each audience I peeked in to over the two days. Additionally, every time there was an anglicized word used, like "geigeru counteru" or "oxygenu destroyeru", there were bundles of laughter from the linguistically aware clumps of the audience.
You know, the ones who can read and listen at the same time.
Student Life Cinema employees spread the good word.
Our next Silver Screen Sunday (almost too alliterative to still be considered cute and not be from a bygone era, but then again, that seems to be the point) movie will be the Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly classic Singin' In the Rain.