Akihiko Hirata

In Godzilla (1954), Akihiko Hirata makes it worth looking away from the creature. His Daisuke Serizawa is a scientist with a problem of conscience, and the performance is central to the film's seriousness. There is no reassuring amusement at the material, no suggestion that the actor thinks himself above it. We were moved by Serizawa's distress because Hirata makes responsibility feel like something this man has to live with.

The part brought lasting recognition and a pattern of casting that followed him through the Toho monster and science-fiction films of the 1950s to the 1970s. He plays Professor Kyouichiro Kashiwagi in Rodan (1956) and Dr Shinzo Mafune in Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), his final role in the Godzilla series. Scientists were joined by detectives and officials: men whose jobs required them to know what was happening. But he also worked in comedy and played samurai, including in Kurosawa's Sanjuro (1962), so the familiar scientist parts should not be mistaken for the whole career.

Ishirō Honda directed him in ten films, and Godzilla shows why an actor willing to take the material seriously was useful to that director. Alongside Takashi Shimura's grave Kyohei Yamane, Hirata helps the human discussions hold our attention when the writing slows down. Honda makes the destruction hurt, helped by Akira Ifukube's mournful score. Hirata keeps the question of responsibility personal; the film needs someone to make us care about a decision as well as fear the creature.

The limitation is that seriousness does not always make for lively drama. The human exchanges in Godzilla can be stiff, and Hirata's conviction cannot entirely disguise the passages where the writing slows things down. We would rather have that stiffness than a knowing wink whenever the premise becomes difficult to believe. Begin with Godzilla, and give its troubled scientist as much attention as its creature.