The heartless pressures of corporate life and the giddy wonders of its mass-media creations merge in the Japanese director Yasuzo Masumura's derisively satirical 1958 melodrama "Giants and Toys."

Adapted by Yoshio Shirasaka from a short story by Takeshi Kaiko, Giants and Toys focuses - like TV's Mad Men avant la lettre - on advertising as a way to explore a nation's changing self-image in changing times.

Masumura drives the intensity of his comedy right up to the edge, asking his characters to give up their hearts, their dignity and their very lives.

Giants and Toys is an overwhelming film both visually and aurally and it culminates in an over-the-top third act that ties everything together and delivers a rather nihilistic punchline that skewers both capitalism and Japanese work culture.