Giants and Toys

• Director: Yasuzo Masumura
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Comedy
• Movie Type: Satire
• Themes: Office Politics
• Release Year: 1958
• Country: JP
• Run Time: 95 minutes

Plot

Yasuzo Masumura's dark satire of postwar Japan's cutthroat business culture stars Hiroshi Kawaguchi as Nishi, a young executive for a candy company locked in fierce competition with two rival companies. By chance he and another executive in his company meet a loudmouthed female taxi driver with bad teeth, Kyoko (Hitomi Nozoe), who they transform, through a clever marketing campaign, into an unlikely sex symbol to launch their new line of caramels. Nishi also tries to extract information about his competitors' marketing plans through an old college friend at one company and a girlfriend at another. Along the way he finds himself falling for Kyoko, but finds that the worlds of business and love are painfully incompatible. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide

Review

Cult director Yasuzo Masumura cut his filmmaking teeth as an assistant to Kon Ichikawa. Even though he later publicly broke with his mentor, Giants and Toys makes clear that Ichikawa's dark sense of humor and distrust of Japan's postwar economic boom definitely rubbed off on him. The film's star, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, also an Ichikawa favorite, is the perfect vehicle for Masumura's savage critique of the ruthless business world. With his youthful face often twisted into a mask of perplexity, his Nishi looks like a kid thrown to the wolves of the advertising world, his innocence constantly chipped away by what he has to do to keep the candy company he works for on top. By contrast, Kyoko (Hitomi Nozoe) is certainly one of the most unusual figures ever to be thrust into the limelight. Transformed by Nishi and a decadent photographer from low-class taxi driver into a space-suit-clad advertising icon, she grabs her public persona with such gusto that she soon leaves Nishi in the dust (her nutty nightclub act is worth the price of admission alone). The soulless nature of big business has, of course, been satirized over and over again in movies, but Masumura does it without lapsing into sentimentality or self-righteousness. His humor keeps its bite throughout, becoming darker as the film progresses, and he compounds the story's considerable ironies by shooting it in bright, saturated colors that belie the darkness beneath. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide

Cast

Hiroshi Kawaguchi - Yousuke Nishi

Credit

Yasuzo Masumura - Director, Tatsuji Nakashizu - Editor, Tetsuo Tsukahara - Composer (Music Score), Hiroshi Murai - Cinematographer, Hideo Nagata - Producer, Yoshio Shirasaka - Screenwriter, Ken Kaiko - Book Author

Similar Movies

Consuming Passions; VD; Afraid to Die; Good Morning; Barbarians at the Gate; How to Get Ahead in Advertising

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