Giants and Toys Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Giants and Toys Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 11, 2021

If in a visual essay included on this disc as a supplement Asian cinema scholar Earl Jackson understandably makes a connection between Giants and Toys and another film by Yasuzô Masumura which focuses on corporate intrigue and competition, Black Test Car, there are at least a couple of other films whose production years kind of bookend Giants and Toys' 1958 genesis and which can be seen as kinda sorta analogs, at least in part. Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan's 1957 effort A Face in the Crowd documented the corrosive effects of an "everyday" type plucked from obscurity and turned into a major media sensation, while Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's The Apartment from 1960 documented the corrosive effects of corporate culture in general. In an introduction to the film also included on this disc as a supplement, Tony Rayns also mentions another 1957 outing, Frank Tashlin's Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, since both that film and the one currently under review kind of relentlessly skewer the world of promotion and marketing. Giants and Toys deals with all of these issues in the perhaps completely unexpected context of a trio of Japanese candy manufacturers attempting to dominate caramel sales in their native land. Giants and Toys was culled from a novel by Takeshi Kaikō, who was in 1958 something of an overnight media sensation himself, having recently won Japan's coveted Akutagawa Prize shortly before the film came out. While some elements, including some of the names of the caramel manufacturers, were evidently changed in the matriculation of the property to the screen, according to some of the supplements included on this disc, the film hews rather closely to Kaikō's subtle but often trenchant deconstruction of a post World War II Japan which, to quote one of those supplements, had moved on from the will to survive to the will to succeed.

Giants and Toys begins with a rather striking credits sequence that starts with the girl who will turn out to be the "Lonesome Rhodes" of this tale, Kyôko Shima (Hitomi Nozoe), kind of stretching her arms, which is then freeze framed, at which point the image desaturates from color to black and white and then is reproduced over and over as a cascading series of smaller stills, as if Shima herself were being mass marketed. The fact that the sequence ends with all of these smaller images blowing away as if being swept offstage might be an indication of how the film perceives the vagaries of fame and fortune.

Yôsuke Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) might be thought of as the equivalent to the Jack Lemmon character in The Apartment, in that Nishi, like Chuck Baxter, is a "middle management" type caught up in the maelstrom of corporate life, where everything is done in service of the company and a hoped for climb up the veritable corporate ladder. Nishi works at World Caramels, which is in competition with Apollo and Giant, with all three on the hunt for market supremacy. Through an almost random series of events, Kyôko finds herself hired to be the "face" of World Caramels in a series of ads and personal appearances.

Kyôko's ragged and decayed looking teeth would hardly seem to make her the ideal candidate to be a candy company's "spokesmodel", but those teeth are an apt metaphor for the general cultural dissolution that Yasuzô Masumura seems to want to ascribe largely to an ironically unseen but still deeply felt American presence. That said, as some of the supplements get into, and as even the screenplay overtly mentions at one point, the United States was a few years "ahead" of Japan, and in fact Japan was just starting to have its own "television revolution" at this point, something that helps explain why so much of the competition between the companies in Giants and Toys is comprised of in person events. That said, one of the film's most memorable sequences documents the filming of a commercial where Kyôko is outfitted in astronaut attire, replete with a space helmet, in just one example of the film's emphasis on the absurdity of some marketing strategies.

There's more than just Kyôko's story at play here, though, and some of the most interesting material actually revolves around Yôsuke's superior Ryuji Goda (Hideo Takamatsu), who disparages the approach of his father-in-law Yashiro (Kinzo Shin), who heads up World's advertising department and who advocates for bushido (i.e., the Samurai code of honor) in business, something Goda finds old fashioned and ridiculous. There's also a whole subplot involving Nishi's girlfriend Kurahashi (Michiko Ono), who works for one of the rival candy companies, and whom Nishi tries to ply for information, while quite the opposite is happening.

The narrative certainly has more than enough to chew on, but the film has some downright gonzo aspects which are nowhere more evident than in some quasi-musical numbers. The opening credits sequence actually has a weird late 50s version of a J-pop tune which is hilariously about cannibalism, and rather amazingly that tune is reprised as a production number for Kyôko late in the film, when she's evidently establishing herself as the Japanese version of Yma Sumac, replete with "native" dancers, exotic percussion, and primal screams at various cadences. Another sequence which Earl Jackson makes special note of involves that aforementioned filming of a commercial where Kyôko is in an astronaut outfit, a sequence which seems to at least subvert if not outright defy the laws of space and time as it offers a nonlinear and perhaps illogical set of images where the commercial is both completed (and seen by various characters) and being filmed.

Giants and Toys Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Giants and Toys is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains only the following fairly generic information on the transfer:

Giants and Toys is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with mono sound. The High Definition master was produced and supplied by Kadokawa, with additional grading and restoration by Arrow Films at R3Store Studios, London.

The palette is one of this transfer's strong suits for the most part, with some incredibly vivid primaries, especially some of the reds. Yellows also predominate at times and are also often very vivid. There does appear to be some minor fading at play, as flesh tones often skew slightly toward brown, and some dark material in particular can suffer from occasional crush (see screenshots 18 and 19). Densities do vary somewhat (one of the early club scenes is a notable departure from the bulk of the presentation), but on the whole retain significant depth. Detail is generally very pleasing, with patterns on fabrics resolving well and perhaps making the black makeup masking Hitomi Nozoe's teeth even more obvious. Grain is rather heavy, to the point that things can look rather roughhewn at times, arguably further exacerbating some variant clarity. That latter aspect can be due at least in part to an abundance of opticals, including the repeated use of superimposed imagery of a cigarette lighter (see screenshot 5). Occasional slight damage has made it through the restoration gauntlet, but on the whole there are no significant signs of age related wear and tear. My score is 3.75.

Giants and Toys Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Giants and Toys features a DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track in the original Japanese. Fidelity is generally fine here, though some of the music can sound like it's just on the verge of distorting, as in some of those aforementioned primal screams in the weird "Exotica" number toward the end of the film. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly and there are no issues with regard to dropouts. Optional English subtitles are available.

Giants and Toys Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Irene González-López


• Introduction to Giants and Toys by Tony Rayns (HD; 10:26)


• In the Realm of the Publicists (HD; 20:35) is an interesting video essay by Earl Jackson, Chair Professor at Asia University, Taiwan.


• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:31)


• Image Gallery (HD; 10:30)

Additionally, Arrow has provided its typically well appointed insert booklet, with cast and crew information, an interesting essay by Michael Raine, a Masumara Filmography, and information on the transfer.

Giants and Toys Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As some of the bonus material on this disc gets into, Giants and Toys is a remarkably prescient piece of filmmaking which subtly but pretty acerbically documents aspects of Japanese culture that were already spinning out of control, even before the wide advent of television. The "comedy" here may be decidedly dark, but this is a film with a memorable aesthetic supporting a fascinating takedown of "fame and fortune". Technical merits are generally solid, and the supplementary package is outstanding. Recommended.