My fascination with Masumura continues. This time, we have Giants And Toys which was, by all accounts, Masumura's first real box office hit. And it is the most successful of his films I have seen so far. As always with Masumura, it is almost impossible to summarize the plot in a few sentences, but the film centers on two advertisement executives, the veteran Gondo and his fresh out of college apprentice Nishi, who discover Kyoko, a girl with bad teeth and ugly clothes and make her the mascot of their campaign for caramel sweets. She goes on to become a star and wants to pursue her dream of becoming a singer and actress, while the two men who discovered her have to fight for their integrity, mental sanity and jobs.
More than a simple satire, Giants And Toys is a fierce critique of Japan's unleashed capitalism in the 1950's. Masumura already touched on this subject matter in Kisses, his feature debut, but he makes it much more explicit in this film. The first shot of the movie is of a large crowd of men wearing suits and ties, on their way to work, all looking identical, all suppressing their inner-selves for the illusion of a decent wage and economic freedom. And immediately, the characters not only start arguing about sales, commercials and profitability, but discuss whether or not the western model of economics is superior to the Japanese, until one of the characters exclaims "America is Japan!" (When Kyoko is featured on the cover page of a magazine, one of the editors says "Kyoko is a bigger hit than the James Dean special edition", which underlines Masumura's contempt of Japan's obsession with applying western-style economics to a completely different indigenous culture). Capitalism then is scrutinized and dissected in all its unhumanness: "sales are everything" and "I'll do anything for money" are just a few quotes from characters who give themselves plainly to this philosophy of pure profitability (Masumura also critiques the unrelenting nature of capitalism, when one of the characters offers "If we stop and think, we'll be crushed")
It is no wonder then, that the few characters who don't believe in this particular brand of capitalism and/or insist on more traditional Japanese values are depicted as weak, sick, dying, or all of these together. When Nishi finds out that his best friend double-crossed him to make a quick buck and reminds him of their childhood, his friend simply hurls at him: "These days are over. Forget them!" When Gondo's superior questions his add campaign, the creative over-achiever simply tells the old man "you're outdated. You should resign". Everyone who admonishes this crazy race for profit and market-share is laughed at and ridiculed. Humanistic values don't seem to go with an economic model that has no regard for everyday people and is exclusively directed towards the future.
Thus, Masumura frames the scenes in which executives and suit wearing lemmings conceive of add campaigns and seemingly make decisions in wide angles, populating the space with a lot of different people who all have an individual but ultimately meaningless tasks, suggesting a nation full of bustling energy, but with no clue as to where to direct it sensibly. On the other hand, when Masumura films individuals, he frames them lopsidedly, upside-down, or otherwise quizzically. Even in private life, the director seems to tell us, communication is malfunctioning and the picture has to be straightened out.
Giants And Toys is a full-blown success on many levels and highly recommended.
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