Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
After this movie, Savant is willing to admit that Yasuzo Masumura was some kind of film
genius. Giants and Toys, a freewheeling but savagely critical look at the postwar economic boom,
is the most illuminating film I've yet seen about Japanese culture.
Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well was stylized social comment, but Masumura and writer Ishio
Shirasaka's knife-edged picture of a consumer landscape devoured by American values and business
practices, is the kind of picture I didn't know was ever made in Japan. American satires on
advertising tended toward the cartoonish silliness of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?; this
black comedy plays for keeps, with fewer bizarre touches than, say, The Loved One, and a much
more accurate picture of its subject, the real Japan. Ruthlessly critical, it comes off as a powerful
denunciation of the entire direction Japan was taking, catching up with 100 years of sharp Western
business practices in a matter of a decade or two.
Synopsis:
World Candy Company is engaged in a media advertising war for the Japanese candy
market, against Giant and Apollo, their main competitors. World's publicity men feel constant pressure
to make dramatic sales increases, which prompts desperate efforts to find out what's going on at the
other companies. Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) is the eager assistant to Goda (Hideo Takamatsu), whose
job is on the line to produce sales results. Together they decide to place World's
hopes on a 'space' themed campaign, and they find a spunky and photogenic model in Kyoko Shima
(Hitomi Nozoe), a gamin with terrible teeth, but the desirable (?) ability to touch her nose with her long tongue.
The pressure gets higher as Giant's caveman spokesman and World's space girl travel in dueling loudspeaker
buses. Magazines and television shows are saturated with captivating images of Kyoko. All seems well, especially when Apollo Candy suffers
a catastrophic fire, but Kyoko's celebrity is going to her head, and Nishi's attempts to sort out
his love life with his World duties come to ruin.
Giants and Toys immerses the viewer in business, Japan-style, at a time when the whole culture seems to
be emulating an American model. "America is Japan", one executive says, just advanced a few years -
rocket and space station toys that are old hat in the U.S., are big news for Japanese kids (who were
presumbably indoctrinated with pictures like
Chikyu Boeigun (The Mysterians) just the
year before.) The candy companies battle for market supremacy, going at each other like armies. Executives
hand down edicts to their advertising directors as if they were generals telling their officers to succeed or
die. Nothing's ever good enough, no sales level is acceptable. The misfortune of a rival company is
the cue for the competition to close in for the kill; the advice of an elder exec to show mercy and
pull together is dismissed out of hand. That the companies are selling a product that's not even
particularly good for people is irrelevant. There's a consumer base, a mob that can be induced to buy.
And with the right campaigns, buy more and more and more.
Giants and Toys tells the very American story of the recruiting of an eager slum girl to become
World Candy's spokesperson-model, a opportunity that Kyoko Shima devours like the candy that's
rotted her teeth. Naturally, the qualities that make her appealing, such as her impudent smile and
raucous humor, disappear as she learns to sing and dance and gets her teeth straightened. She starts out
ignorant of business ways, with young assisant Nishi pretending to be infatuated with her to secure
her cooperation. The relationship continues through her star-making phase, with photographer
Harukawa (Yunosuke Ito) putting her on every magazine in the country. Nishi and Kyoko soon learn that
anything resembling a traditional Japanese virtue is extinct. Her family grabs up her money, eager for
material goods behooving the blood relations of the "World Caramel Girl." Her adored tadpoles, symbols
of the transformation Kyoko might achieve, are allowed to die from inattention, one after
another. Her supposed boyfriend Nishi is really in love with an ad girl from one of the rivals
(Michiko Ono), a sweet young thing who nevertheless is total calculation. And Nishi's college pal
stabs him in the back as well, stealing Kyoko out from under them.
Instead of just talking their case, Masumura and Shirasaka show this world in a whirlwind of glitzy
montages. Goda's attempts to get his cigarette lighter to function (an odd symbol) is
used as a background for montages, of candy production and Kyoko's rocketing trajectory to fame. The crazy
advertising buses bombard us with the noise of their screaming loudspeaker ads and numbing ad jingles.
Accustomed to serene scenes of tea ceremonies and stylized theater in Japanese
culture? Here, ray-gun toting babes in Space suits share the stage with ballerinas, in a clashing jumble of the
worst of Western Kitsch Kulture. Kyoko's big star breakthrough dance number makes her a cannibal queen
among a horde of spear-throwing natives, singing about killing enemies and spilling 'rivers of blood.'
It's an apt metaphor for the savagery of the business-show biz combine. The more 'sophisticated' a
media-run country, the more barbaric it becomes. The pounding title theme ends with a Punk - like
strangled scream ... in 1958!
Japan is seen as a horde of unhappy workers in Western suits and ties, with the lucky ones
wearing company pins like flags to show their loyalty. 1
Selling is war, with everyone in a constant state of sweaty insecurity. Nishi has his dignity and pride
stripped away, as his boss demands that he demean himself for the good of the ad
campaign. Poor director Goda ends coughing up blood, learning How to Fail in Business while Trying Much
Too Hard. Nishi doesn't fare any better. With his best friend and sweetheart hitting him with slogans
like, 'doublecross the other guy before he can doublecross you', he's got nowhere to turn. The ending
slides toward some crazy climax of death and failure, but the filmmakers surprise us with a much more
memorable image of debasement at the fade-out. 2
All of this is played out at the frantic pace of something like Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three,
and is both
convincing and entertaining. The story is easy to follow (for being so complicated) and the
characters very accessible - they could have walked out of The Apartment, or Patterns.
The screen is constantly being bombarded with mass-produced images celebrated for their Pop-Art
qualities - years before Pop Art hit American culture. Even the titles look ten years ahead of their
time, with a snapshot of Kyoko Sushi multiplying into rows of Warhol-like repeated images. Reams of
colorful magazines (all
opening backwards, of course) and cheap tin toys are everywhere. Savant remembers getting some of those
toys as gifts straight from Japan - especially a spaceship that flashed lights and changed direction
when you tooted on a whistle ...Giants and Toys connects all these ideas with Toho's
toy-celebrating outer space movies.
Chuck Stephens' printed text essay on the DVD insert stresses the fact that Masumura had the unique benefit
of a classy Italian film education before embarking on his very sophisticated, very un-Japanese movies.
When subversive ideas show up in a Japanese fantasy film, they're practically buried within the
context; Masumura's in-your-face, nothing's sacred social criticism is certainly not mainstream
activity. He's a one-of-a-kind, agitating social critic. As I said above, he's progressive even by
American standards. One thinks of Billy Wilder, Frank Tashlin and MAD magazine. But MAD
was forced to become more conservative by the Comic Book Code. Tashlin's so-called anarchic messages
have to be decoded by film critics. And Wilder, after receiving a bloody nose for his uncompromising
Ace in the Hole (The Big Carnival), learned to layer his messages within zany comedy
or romantic melodrama. Giants and Toys is up there with the likes of The Sweet Smell of
Success. It's the very definition of the Refusal to Compromise.
This is the most interesting political movie Savant's seen in a long time.
Fantoma has presented Giants and Toys in a spiffy
presentation. The 16:9 picture is very
good-looking, with muted colors in the 'business' scenes and blaring hues whenever toys, neon, or
the glitzy TV shows take over. The music varies from latin Mambo rhythms, to a savage Gorath-like
march that enforces the relentless, breakneck pace of the advertising machine. A Japanese trailer stresses
the fact that the movie is a serious adult offering; excellent liner notes and biographical
information help clue a gaijin like Savant into the picture. The clarity of the removable
subtitles is also a big help, considering the pace of this audiovisual juggernaut.
Under normal conditions, one takes their chances getting excited by a positive review of a marginal DVD,
because the enthusiasm of a reviewer such as Savant might not correspond to individual tastes. In
this instance, I feel confident that if you respond to what I've said above,
Giants and Toys will be a DVD you won't regret tracking down.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Giants and Toys rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: trailer, photos, biography, filmography
Packaging: Snapper case
Reviewed: February 5, 2002
Footnotes:
1. In 1958 Japan there was at least some security in swearing one's
fealty to a company flag, with job security and pride of place. Americans have certainly lost that
kind of security, and by now, surely the corporate 'downsizing' ethic has reaced Japan too ...?
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2. I won't give it away, but it's a subdued but crushing moment, reminiscent
of the end of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang mixed with the '56 Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, only chillingly subtle.
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DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2002 Glenn Erickson
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