As I write this, Collins Dictionary has declared 2024’s word of the year to be “brat”. Made famous by the same-titled Charli XCX album, the slang meaning of the word is to be bold and imperfect, even a bit messy.
The character played by Hitomi Nozoe in 1958’s Giants and Toys is textbook definition of this contemporary version of brat. She’s young, spunky and unpredictable. Her teeth are terrible. She is weirdly childlike, with pet tadpoles to which she feeds tea leaves. We first see her eyeing displays of desserts in a restaurant window so lustily that I thought she would start licking the glass. She doesn’t do that, but she does frequently shoot out her tongue impulsively at other times, often touching the tip of her nose with it.
It seems unlikely she could become a model, yet she becomes a big star, courtesy of the machinations of candy company employees played by Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Hideo Takamatsu. I expected this to be yet another variation on Pygmalion, except they don’t even try to refine her. Instead, the public is immediately captivated by this intriguingly disheveled mess of a girl who is unlike all the high-fashion models the public has seen before.
Once she’s a star, the candy company is ready to unveil their huge promotional campaign centered around her. Unfortunately, the resulting publicity isn’t radically improving sales. Things aren’t going much better for their two chief competitors, with their own promotional giveaways, one offering small animals and the other giving a chance to win a lifetime annuity. Part of the problem might be the stores being overstocked with the product of all manufacturers. As one sales rep puts it: “In short, capitalism has come to an end.” Well, not quite by that time, but I wonder what that guy would think about the state of it today.
It is lines like that which suggest how modern and prescient this film can be at times. Its critique of media and marketing is quite incisive, reminding me in many ways of the even more misanthropic A Face in the Crowd. It is also a vicious take on the “salaryman” mentality of Japan at the time, especially with Takamatsu weaseling his way into his boss’s job only to also inherit that man’s ulcer.
Another interesting aspect of the film is how it shows business being the new warfare. That’s a rather bold thing to do in a film made in a country which wanted to put militant notions behind it after being in WWII just a decade before. But, as that sales rep from before puts it: “We salesmen are the infantry.” And I never before considered how the word “campaign” can apply to both a military initiative and an advertising push.
Women fare surprisingly well in this, at least compared to other films of the time. Michiko Ono is a high-ranking promotions person at a competitor of the company Kawaguchi works for, and she is pragmatic about the secret affair they are having. She’s even amused by his incredibly clumsy attempts to get inside information about her firm’s campaigns.
But Giants and Toys is really Nozoe’s film, and her character is fascinating to watch. She is a whirling dervish of random impulses balanced with a oddly touching pragmatism. She signs a highly lucrative contract, but only has aspirations to buy crackers with that money. She’s even aware another star will replace her one day, but is accepting of this: “I don’t mind being a puppet or a toy. So long as I’m having fun, I don’t care.” Now, that is brat.
Dir: Yasuzo Masumura
Starring Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Hitomi Nozoe, Hideo Takamatsu
Watched on Arrow Video blu-ray