Godzilla as you have never seen him

After years of watching men in rubber suits kick over obviously fake buildings, it is difficult to conceive of the Godzilla concept as anything other than campy diversion.
That's why you should watch "Gojira."
I watched "Gojira," the 1954 Japanese original film, on DVD last night. A real sense of dread permeates the black-and-white, flickering images. The dialogue -- in subtitles -- reveals the resonance of war.
Think of it: Just nine years after atomic destruction laid waste to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese cinema-goers saw Tokyo -- the heart of Japan -- suffering the same fate.
In the B-movie version most Americans have seen -- "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" -- Raymond Burr and wooden actors from Los Angeles' Little Tokyo were grafted into the film and most of the scenes that relate the monster to Hiroshima and war were excised.
There is a scene in "Gojira" where a woman -- presumably a war widow -- clutches her small daughters as buildings crumble upon them. She reassures her screaming children that they will soon be reunited with their dead father in the next world. You would never see an emotionally wrought scene like that in just any monster movie.
No, "Gojira" means more than a man in a rubber suit walking over balsa-wood models, and that is why I recommend it to everyone.