Les géants et les jouets

Three caramel companies compete with each other to dominate the market and each of three resorts to a ludicrous marketing campaign to attract the public's attention. Spacemen dancing in astronaut suits, savages dressed in leopard skins yelling through loudspeakers from the backs of buses, financial subsidies from birth to marriage, each company resorts to a kitschen-sink approach that's as good as the results it brings. There's nothing at all subtle about this movie. It's completely in your face from start to finish, a fast-paced riproaring cataract one part irreverent comedy twenty parts OTT scathing satire.

And therein lies the problem. GAT makes its point across with the same clarity and fierceness of a DR. STRANGELOVE, lacking the acerbic wit and terrific performances of Kubrick's anti-war film maybe, but the problem is that the point it beats over our heads is not as urgent, prophetic or insightful as it might have been in the context of the booming economy of postwar Japan. It's all a bit much to take in one sitting. Greedy PR managers yell stuff like "We need more sells!", neon signs flash, a painted girl does a dance number, advertising trucks, wheels moving, assembly line machines pumping out caramel boxes, executives telling each other the plot of the movie in front of sales diagrams, grotesque faces smile grimly in closeup, people point at camera yelling "we need more sales!" etc.

When the two principal characters, the honest exec who values integrity above money and the cut-throat exec who will stop at nothing to achieve the company's goals, clash in the film's climax yelling at each other stuff like "We must sell more caramels! We must win the prize!" / "No, I value my integrity!", the movie had long outstayed its welcome. Masumura backed himself into a corner that left him no other option but to beat the same dead horse for 90 minutes. As a piece of satire, GAT has lost some of its bite. As a piece of kitschen-sink camp, it's still as outrageous as it ever was. Combine the two and it's easy to see why it has a cult following. It just wasn't my thing.

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.

Japan, 1958. As fierce competition goes on between the Giant, World, and Apollo candy companies, Nishi, an advertising executive for World, finds on the streets a cute hillbilly girl called Kyoko with rotted out teeth, bad clothes and tadpoles as pets. Sensing she possesses some sort of weird appeal, he immediately thinks she would make a great model for the next World campaign, selling candy in a space suit (Space themes, the execs reason, should score big as a new theme for advertising in Asia; let's remember this movie was made a year after the Sputnik). As she becomes more famous, of course, Kyoko develops a more independent streak, and resents more and more being manipulated around by the World people. So she tries to pursue the dream of being a singer in the new medium of television. It is amazing that this satire of advertising, capitalism and consumerism was made in 1958, since it is unlike any other movie from that time, including American movies. A film relatively (and undeservedly) unknown, it's full of pop imagery a decade before pop took over the world. It only shows once again that since the 1950s, Japan has been ahead of the rest of the world (including other rich countries) by decades. By the way, I saw it in a terrific color print, that makes the Japan of almost 50 years ago look as if it was shot yesterday.

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).