Mosura tai Gojira/Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Part 3: Review
Reverend MattReview
Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re ignoring us.
In Steve Ryfle’s Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of “The Big G,” – really the definitive English-language Godzilla text – he calls Mothra vs. Godzilla “indisputably the greatest of the Godzilla sequels.” Though it pains your reviewer to differ with so eminent a Godzilla scholar, he must dispute this anyway. In doing so, your reviewer is at variance with not only Ryfle, but most of North American Godzilla fandom; the treatment that this movie receives in the literature is enthusiastic to the point of the embarrassing. And it’s certainly not a bad movie. What, then, is your reviewer’s problem?
Well, it’s not Godzilla. Godzilla is more threatening in this film than he has been since the first, or will be for the rest of the Showa period. He is a pure engine of destruction, here. Some commentators have argued that he destroys in this film accidentally, just through the fact of his existence; but upon alighting in Nagoya, his first action is to blast a building with his ray for no reason, and he assaults Mothra’s egg with a similar lack of provocation. This is an evil Godzilla, and it’s nice to see. He also remembers to use his atomic breath in this film, and that’s great too. Further, he attacks a lot of things with his tail, which whips around nicely when not being so used; and if the recent Godzilla video games have taught humanity anything, it’s that Godzilla’s tail is especially dangerous. On the down side, the sequence where he tears down buildings through sheer clumsiness could probably go. Where appearance is concerned, this is one of the better Godzilla suits (constructed by Kanzi Yagi, with a particularly high level of input from Haruo Nakajima), though it is not as good as the one fromKing Kong vs. Godzilla. It’s thinner and darker than before, and has a lumpier head; its upper lip quivers in a lifelike manner, though this was apparently caused by a tear in the suit rather than intentional agency. His light-colored eyebrow ridges, while a bit odd-looking against his general coloration, are positioned so as to give him an angry and sinister appearance.
The Shobijin aren’t the problem either. They are very entertaining and well-acted; there were apparently concerns about casting big pop stars in this film, but the Ito sisters proved very easy to work with. What exactly the Shobijin are – other than 30-centimeter-tall, telepathic twins who hang out with Mothra – is never adequately explained, but this is, perhaps, for the best. They provide the element of high fantasy in Mothra’s story, even moreso than the insect herself. Their tininess, their powers, their awesome Mothra songs remove them from the human world. And thus they may be intermediaries between humanity and the monsters, who operate on a removed scale entirely their own. Their unexplained weirdness also makes one more forgiving of any flubs in the effects-work surrounding them; they flicker heavily during a song on Infant Island, but that’s okay – maybe flickering is just part of their act. Not much of this forgiveness needs to be applied, however. The miniaturizing special effects are usually spot-on, seamless; there’s a bit where the Ito sisters play their roles in a specially constructed giant hotel room that’s especially great.
Talking of effects, those are excellent, as well. There are few important and noticeable gaffes, and a number of excellent pieces. The hatching of the egg is very good-looking indeed, as are the bombs dropped by the planes. Godzilla falls into a ravine at one point; the geological strata in that ravine are plainly visible. There’s an especially awesome part where Godzilla’s head catches fire; this was real, and hence, a mistake. But suit actor Haruo Nakajima runs with it, failing to break character, and it makes for a fantastic effect.
A giant egg in a cage? You shouldn’t have!
There are plenty of other nice touches in this movie. Its plot revolves around the monsters, and that’s good. There’s a scene in which Kumayama has beaten on Torahata, and we get a good and gruesome shot of his bloodied face, and this is very effective, though it is quite out of character for both Ishiro Honda and the Godzilla series in general. And it’s nice to have a self-actualized female lead; Junko is the first important woman in this series who is nobody’s girlfriend, sister, daughter, or any of that.
But for all this, there are large sections of this film that simply fail to hold your reviewer’s interest. Broad swaths of it are slow and chatty, especially after Mothra first leaves Japan, and in the period immediately after Godzilla appears. Now, everything they’re talking about is relevant to the plot, but it somehow fails to engage. This is in some large part due to a lack of connection between the human leads and the monsters. Our heroes are never menaced directly, and they have no culpability whatsoever for the initial appearances of Godzilla or the egg. Nor do they have the deep pathos of Yamane or Serizawa from the first picture; they are concerned about what’s going on, but in a thoughtful, furrowed-brow sort of way.
Quiet seriousness may, in fact, be another issue with the movie itself, though it is often cited as one of its positive qualities. The love for Mothra vs. Godzilla is sometimes tinged with a bemoaning of the gonzo silliness to come. But for those who truly enjoy the over-the-top qualities of the rest of the Showa series, the absence of such here does disappoint a bit.
But perhaps we’re overthinking this. Perhaps your reviewer doesn’t like this film as much as some because he simply can’t stand those Mothra caterpillars. They’re giant, hairless grubs with snouts and tiny, sunken eyes, and years of devotion to the Godzilla series have not removed his distaste for them. They are, in fact, very well-realized here, with a convincing undulating motion and skin texture, and this actually only makes it worse. And their hideous victory-chirp! Revolting!
Mothra also had to be summoned whenever Godzilla just got drunk
The adult Mothra, while certainly weird, is much more palatable. The movement afforded to this model’s legs and head helps bring her to life quite nicely. And she does have an intriguing characterization, which is shared with her offspring. Mothra is benevolent – fighting Godzilla with the last of her strength to save her egg, and a people who have only wronged her. And Mothra is intelligent – the larvae are surprisingly tactical, flanking Godzilla, hiding, and so forth. But the larvae are still gross.
And there is still no rational reason why anyone would make a movie about a giant moth in the first place. There are no special traditions attached to moths in Japan; and, though gigantifying insects was popular in the sci-fi of the time, there were plenty of more impressive insects than moths left to enlarge. It is not advised that you let this bother you, however; it is only mentioned because people always ask.
In his article, “Godzilla’s Serious Side,” J. D. Lees, the publisher of G-FAN magazine, states that Mothra vs. Godzilla takes “an unfair swing at capitalism.” And so your reviewer must once again differ with his betters. This film doesn’t have the time to dismantle capitalism itself, but its villains are assuredly motivated by pure greed, loving money above freedom and life. So yeah, a swing is taken at that sort of thing. Why not? And this is a major theme of the film. But this is a film loaded with themes, filled to burst with ‘swings’ at various aspects of society. Politicians are corrupt and slow to act. The military is incompetent – they in fact almost take Godzilla down, but screw it up with their excessive zeal. The press is powerless to effect true change; even when they try to take someone down, Sakai moans, it just winds up being free publicity. The atomic allegory is back, as well. Infant Island is a blasted and terrible, if Star-trek-lookin’, hellhole. (Remarkably, Junko feels responsible for this, and the Infant Islanders blame the entire outside world; the counterpoint, that if anyone is not to blame for nuclear proliferation, it’s Japan, is never mentioned.) Attention is again brought to Godzilla’s own radioactivity, though it is diminishing in its terror, as evidenced by its being washed off of Sakai and Junko with a minimum of fuss. Even throwaway gag lines in this film can be laden with meaning: Nakamura says he’s more afraid of being fired than of Godzilla, and we all have a hearty guffaw, but still it is communicated that personal economics have become more important to some people than the possibility of devastation and calamity.
Godzilla is, of course, that devastation and calamity, and Mothra a symbol of benevolence. With the heart of the story – the monster-fight – being a remarkably direct good vs. evil allegory, then, and with so many examples of evil in the human story, what good is there to be seen? What is the answer to evil? Honda’s answer is: trust and cooperation. A stirring speech about such is delivered to the Infant Islanders by our heroes, full of reference to the brotherhood of man. The larvae defeat Godzilla by working together. The villains turn on one another, and in so doing are unmade. People must learn to get along, to trust one another. True enough! True enough.