Les géants et les jouets

The themes of people working themselves to death in a desperate struggle for "success" is as relevant today as it was over 40 years ago. And the analysis of popular culture in US/Japan seems right on.

The young protagonists' choice between personal integrity and loyalty to the mainstream society continues to face us every day.

This could very well be the greatest cinematic exposé on the eat-or-be-eaten attitude of corporations. Three rival caramel companies war with each other. The film focuses on the marketing departments of these companies. Think Cola Wars and you'll have a clue. This film was made in 1958, but it feels very modern. And the new Fantoma DVD is so pristine that it looks as if it were made yesterday. I've never seen a Criterion DVD even approach this quality. Please, give Fantoma your money. Order all four of the Yasuzo Masumura DVDs as I did! 10/10.

I haven't seen any of Masumura's other films, but, if they are anything like "Giants and Toys," they are extremely strange. Think "Four Hundred Blows" crossed with "Greed is good" American-style capitalism in post-war Japan, and you've got a good idea of what the story is about. Wickedly on-target satire, good performances, and interesting visual ideas (including Warhol-esque shots of ads featuring World Caramel's poster girl) converge in a very good, if surreal, movie. It's not quite good enough to be a classic, but it is unpredictable and enjoyable to watch.

Corporate intrigue between the Giant, World, and Apollo caramel companies. Nishi is an ad exec for World, his best friend from college works in the advertising division of Giant, and his girlfriend works in the advertising division of Apollo. Nishi's boss, Godo is married into the family that runs the company, and it is obviously not a happy marriage, Godo disrespects his wife and has worked himself into a bleeding ulcer. When Godo and Nishi discover a cute hillbilly girl with rotted out teeth on the streets, Godo thinks she would make a good model and convinces her that Nishi is in love with her. While the rival companies create competing campaigns the young workers attempt to find a middle ground between loyalty to the company and loyalty to your friends. Eventually things turn very bad, and this may be the only movie in history where a guy walking around in a spacesuit with a bubble helmet, shooting a toy gun is a downer ending. The movie features a very weird musical number where Kyoko the hillbilly girl (after getting her teeth fixed) sings a jazzy little number about death, destruction and cannibalism. It is amazing that this film was made in 1958, it is light years beyond any other movie from the 50's I've ever seen. The use of Nishi's lighter to trigger montages is a really interesting idea visually, and I've never seen anything like that before. I give it a 10, and now I definitely need to see more of Masumura's films- the only other one I've seen is Blind Beast which is a horror/sexploitation flick in the style of The Collector.

Giants and Toys is a movie with lots of very interesting ideas and if the movie would have been done right it could have easily been a 9/10 for me, which, if you know me, is not a score I give a movie for free. The directing of this movie however missed the point and there was no focus which made the movie seem like a bit of a mess and after you finish it, rather than a coherent picture only bits and pieces stick with you which were the great parts and ideas of the movie.

The tone for example was all over the place. It started off as a fast paced comedy and then later introduced dramatic and thought provoking concepts that deal with the ruthlessness of business and the suffering people have to endure to succeed. Those 2 tones don't really mix well and slowing down your pacing in order to really capture your image of business would have helped to really convey the idea.

The movie also deals with the idea of how people change and become monsters when they become inclined in the nature of business, but sadly didn't manage to capture that with their most important character, the protagonist. He starts off as a naïve young guy new to business and ends in the same way while everything around him changes. I sadly very rarely see in Japanese movies this sort of character development where a good guy is turned into some sort of monster through his environment (you have a few movies which go somewhat in that direction, such as Akira, but you don't have those character developments in Japanese movies as you see in: Citizen Kane, the shining, lord of war, blow or prestige). This sort of character development that can really hammer home the ideas behind the movie is sadly missing in some movies that would really need it, most noticeable this movie. So yeah, Giants and Toys is a good movie, its entertaining well-acted, nicely shot, has a lot to say about businesses and how they are run and is surely worth a watch, but with the right focus to what this movie actually should be, it could have been way better (but ofc also way worse depending on the focus).