The event opened up wounds still fresh from Japan’s defeat in World War II, which concluded with not only the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also the razing of Tokyo. Arriving less than a decade after the conclusion of the war, Godzilla was an encapsulation of that period, and Japanese audiences would have immediately recognised the symbolism of its opening scene, where a fishing vessel is destroyed by a flash of light emanating from the sea.

As the ships sent to investigate are also destroyed, the residents of nearby Odo Island begin to sense that something is terribly wrong. “When it can’t find fish in the sea, it finds men on the land,” a village elder warns, referring to a legendary creature named Godzilla, who in days past was appeased by the occasional female sacrifice. That prediction is soon proved accurate, as Odo is attacked by night, before the colossal predator turns its keen eyes to the mainland and the neon lights of Tokyo.

Honda had accesss to a then-unprecedented budget for the Japanese film industry (reckoned to be as much as $1m) when realising his scenes of destruction. Seasoned cinematographer Eiji Tsuburaya had previously created some uncannily realistic effects for war movies before the 1950s, and he brought those skills to the scenes of devastation in Godzilla. Famously, Tsuburaya and Honda chose not to employ the same stop motion techniques Harryhausen and Willis O’Brien had used in their monster movies (though one brief scene did use some animation) since it was deemed too expensive and time-consuming.

Instead, Tsuburaya opted to use an actor in a suit (Haruo Nakajima, who would play the part until 1973) and scale models to bring his action scenes to life. Although some critics dismissed this approach as comparatively crude – and perhaps even quaint, particularly when seen in later kaiju movies – cinematographer Masao Tamai’s lighting brings real drama to these sequences: often seen in silhouette against a blazing city, Godzilla has an elemental, menacing presence. Godzilla’s original name, Gojira, is an amalgam of the word gorira (or ‘gorilla’) and kuijira (meaning whale) – and the creature’s physical weight and destructive power embody that name perfectly.

Although Godzilla is the title star of the movie, Honda places human characters at the centre of his drama. Shot with surprising naturalism, the film’s really about the interplay between four people: Doctor Yamane (Momoko Kochi), who wants to protect and research the creature, his daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi), who’s in love with ship captain Hideto (Akira Takarada) and plans to break off her engagement to the increasingly reclusive scientist, Dr Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata).