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Giants and Toys
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Wikipedia article
is a 1958 Japanese satirical comedy film directed by Yasuzo Masumura and starring Hiroshi Kawaguchi.
Plot
Candy manufacturer World competes with companies Giant and Apollo over caramel sales. While looking for a poster girl for a new promotional campaign, chief of advertising Goda discovers Kyoko, a working class girl with bad teeth, and makes her World's mascot, dressed up in a space suit and wielding a ray gun. Meanwhile, Goda's assistant Nishi, at the instruction of his boss, has an affair with Apollo's advertising lady Kurahashi to learn about their campaign plans. As Kyoko's popularity rises to unprecedented heights, the young woman is less and less inclined to go along with World's plans for her, working on a career as a singer and dancer. After Kyoko terminates their contract, Goda, cracking up and sick from professional stress to the point of coughing up blood, wants to take over her role. Nishi, worried about his boss's health, stops him and takes over the role of the mascot himself. Dressed in Kyoko's spacesuit and wielding a ray gun, Nishi patrols the streets, followed by Kurahashi who prompts him to smile a bright smile for the passers-by.
Cast
* Hiroshi Kawaguchi as Ysuke Nishi
* Hitomi Nozoe as Kyoko Shima
* Ynosuke It as Junji Harukawa
* Michiko Ono as Masami Kurahashi
* Kyu Sazanka as Takakura Higashi
* Kinzo Shin as Kohei
* Hideo Takamatsu as Ryuji Goda
Production
'Giants and Toys' was a short story written by Takeshi Kaik. After Kaik won the Akutagawa Prize in 1957 for 'The Naked King', Daiei Film bought the rights to 'Giants and Toys.' The story was an entry in the "business novel" (, 'keizai shsetsu') genre, which satirizes Japanese workers' devotion to their corporations.
Legacy
In the British Film Institute's list of the best Japanese films from 1925 to the present, reviewer Jasper Sharp describes 'Giants and Toys' as a "deliciously wicked satire on the new cut-throat competitiveness of the postwar corporate world" and a "marker point of modernist cinema".
References
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