Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

James Hitchcock Like "My Fair Lady", "Gigi" is a musical with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The two films are set in major European capitals (Paris and London) at around the same period in history (1900 and circa 1910). Both feature an older man/younger woman romance set against the background of high society. In "My Fair Lady" the female lead is played by Audrey Hepburn and in "Gigi" by the nearest thing Hollywood possessed to a Hepburn clone, Leslie Caron. (Hepburn herself, who had played Gigi in a non-musical stage adaptation of Colette's novella, was offered the role but turned it down). In both films the leading lady's voice is dubbed by a professional singer but the leading man's is not, although neither Rex Harrison nor Louis Jourdan had a great singing voice; both essentially recite their songs rather than singing them. One difference is that "My Fair Lady" is based on a Broadway musical whereas "Gigi" (like "Calamity Jane" and some other musicals) started life as a film and became a stage production later. The film opens with Honoré Lachaille, an elderly upper-class roué, drooling over the charms of "leetle girls" who "get beeger every day". One of those "leetle girls" is Gigi, who is being trained by her terrible old grandmother Madame Alvarez and her even more terrible Great Aunt Alicia to become a courtesan, a word which in this context doesn't quite mean "high-class call girl" but certainly means "gold-digging professional mistress". The man they have lined up as Gigi's lover is Honoré's wealthy nephew Gaston, a sugar-daddy in the most literal sense as his fortune derives from his family's sugar-refining business. (In the original novella Gigi's full name was "Gilberte", but this is never used in the film). Gigi's parents don't seem to have much say in their daughter's future; we learn that her mother, who is heard but never seen, is a not-very-successful opera singer and never see or hear anything of her father.Yes, I know what you're thinking. Given that the Production Code was still in force in 1958, what on earth were the American censors thinking of when they allowed this sleazy story onto the silver screen? The producer Arthur Freed apparently managed to persuade the Hays Office that the story condemned sexual exploitation, something that would probably have come as news to Colette, never first in to bat for the Moral Majority and never in a hurry to condemn anything of a sexual nature, had she still been alive in 1958. The story seems even tawdrier when you consider that most of the characters are completely amoral; when Gaston learns that one of his discarded mistresses has attempted suicide he and Honoré regard this as grounds for celebration rather than regret. Gigi herself, who manages to preserve a belief in true love, is a partial exception, but even she sees true love in terms of becoming Gaston's gold-digging professional wife rather than his mistress. (It might have been more interesting had she found true love with a worker in Gaston's factory). Something which might trouble modern viewers more than it did audiences in 1958 is that we never learn exactly how old Gigi is. Caron was 27 at the time, and Hepburn would have been 29, but I think we can assume that Gigi is much younger than this, probably still a teenager. (A would-be courtesan who is still a virgin in her late twenties is definitely a slow starter). At times, indeed, particularly in the early scenes, Gigi comes across as being more thirteen-going-on-fourteen than sixteen-going-on-seventeen, which makes her romance with the thirty-something Gaston seem decidedly creepy. Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle may have been considerably younger than Harrison's Professor Higgins, but at least she was an adult woman capable of knowing her own mind. And what were the Academy thinking of when they showered this film with so many Oscars? It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won all of them, although it was not nominated in any acting categories. (Nine Oscars for one film was a record at the time, but one which only lasted a single year until it was beaten by "Ben-Hur"). Admittedly, some of these were well-deserved, such as "Best Costume Design"; Cecil Beaton's costumes are certainly sumptuous. "Best Musical Score" for Andre Previn also seems fair enough, and some of the songs are pretty good. I have always hated "Thank Heaven for Little Girls"; Lerner's only excuse is that in 1958 it probably sounded more innocent, and less like the Official Anthem of the Paedophile Liberation Front, than it does today. I liked, however, the gay and vivacious "The Night They Invented Champagne" and "I Remember It Well" is not only amusing but also surprisingly touching as Honoré and Madame Alvarez recall- in his case not always accurately- their long-ago love affair. (Honoré may be an old rogue, but at least Maurice Chevalier makes him a lovable rogue). But "Best Picture" and "Best Director" for Vincente Minnelli? There were, in fact, some excellent films made in 1958. My own vote for "Best Picture" would have gone to William Wyler's masterful "The Big Country", but there was also Hitchcock's "Vertigo", "The Defiant Ones" and the British-made "Ice Cold in Alex". I know that in the fifties the Academy looked down on Westerns, didn't understand Hitch, disliked anything with an anti-racist message and overlooked anything British, but compared to films of this calibre- or for that matter to the far superior "My Fair Lady"- "Gigi" just looks like frothy trivia. 6/10A goof. Honoré says that he was "not born in this century". As the year is 1900, which was the last year of the nineteenth century, not the first year of the twentieth, he almost certainly was "born in this century"- unless he is supposed to be over 100 years old.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 1958. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at the Royale: 15 May 1958. U.K. release: floating from July 1960. Australian release: 4 September 1958. 10,379 feet; 116 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A young girl in turn-of-the-century Paris aspires to marry a rich, handsome aristocrat.NOTES: Voting members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected Gigi as Best Film of the Year. The movie also won awards for screenplay, direction, color cinematography, art direction, costumes, film editing, music scoring, and best song ("Gigi"). The Hollywood Foreign Press Association named Gigi the year's Best Musical, while Minnelli carried off the Best Director award and Gingold, Best Supporting Actress. The readers of Photoplay magazine voted Gigi the best film of 1958. The movie came in at 3rd position in the annual poll of American and Canadian film critics and commentators conducted by the trade newspaper, The Film Daily. M-G-M production number: 1723.COMMENT: Although the number one reason to see this film is, of course, Maurice Chevalier, please don't deprive yourself of a glorious entertainment experience by attempting to see Gigi in any other format but CinemaScope. Director Minnelli has used the full resources of the CinemaScope screen with flair, taste and imagination. The movie is nothing less than a charming, captivating triumph. Miss Caron's fans will not be disappointed, while Louis Jourdan, a much under-rated actor, is not only as stylishly persuasive as usual, but sings his own songs with the same degree of effortless charm that Chevalier brings to his. Gingold and Jeans are also perfectly cast.

jacobs-greenwood Of all the films which won the Best Picture Oscar, one has to wonder how this ho hum musical earned all nine Oscars for which it was nominated. Was it just a weak year or did The Defiant Ones (1958) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) cancel each other out as well? It's a mystery. Director Vincente Minnelli, the Original Song "Gigi", its Musical Score, and Adapted Screenplay were among the other Oscar winners. Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan star.Gigi (Caron) has been raised quite innocently by her Grandmother Madame Alvarez (Hermione Gingold), with whom she lives. Alvarez didn't do as well as her sister, Gigi's former courtesan Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans), who lives in high style but (per her vanity) never leaves her expensive flat with butler (e.g. setup for life by former lovers).However, Alvarez is friends with a rich playboy Gaston Lachaille (Jourdan) who loves to get away from society's trappings - which he finds a "bore" - by visiting her humble apartment, especially because of her energetic granddaughter; he's known Gigi since she was a child and loves to play cards with her.But Gigi is now a young woman who follows Gaston's public love life with delight. Advised by his uncle (Chevalier), an older version of himself, Gaston drops yet another woman (Eva Gabor) he's been dating hoping to escape the trappings of high society for a while.During this time, he takes Gigi and Madame Alvarez to the sea during which he begins to notice the former's maturation. With encouragement and education from Aunt Alicia, a match is eventually made (at first, Gigi resists the arrangement until she decides that she'd "rather be miserable with him than without him").However, when Gigi acts like the courtesan she's been trained to be in lieu of the precocious and fun 'child' he'd been used to, he's forced to examine his lifestyle and make a decision.Added to the National Film Registry in 1991. #35 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" is #56 on AFI's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time.

lasttimeisaw One of the most vilified Oscar BEST PICTURE winner, GIGI (a record-breaking win of all its 9 nominations), based on the novella from Colette, it is Vincente Minnelli's pièce-de-résistance. For all the ritziness of his resplendent mise en scène, exquisite costumes and its paraphernalia, in spectacular Metrocolour, CinemaScope glory; for a panoply of vintage chansons to entertain viewers for sheer escapism, sometimes sung in a carefree singsong style, GIGI is a delightful if not equally patronising anachronism, formulaically pontificates with outdated chivalry and self-praised upper-class etiquette with a way too serious face, it might encapsulate the zeitgeist, but for modern viewers, to quote Gaston Lachaille's own words: it's a bore!Gigi (Caron), a young and vivacious girl living with her grandmother Mamita (Gingold) and mother (a coloratura completely off-screen) in an ordinary apartment in Paris, the place is painted in shocking scarlet, a gaudy manifest to what the family represents, under the restrict of Hollywood's production code, the movie never dares to mention it explicitly, but soon we will realise, Gigi is trained to be a courtesan, chiefly by her grandaunt Alicia (Jeans), once a courtesan herself, living in her lavish residence with all the trophies she has garnered through her extraordinary career.Who is the Prince Charming for Gigi? It's Gaston (Jourdan), a toff who befriends her family, and forges a platonic rapport with Gigi, because she is entirely different from all the other lady friends in his hedonistic life, but, soon, he will realise his amorous cravings for her, his courtship stimulates both Mamita and Alicia, but not Gigi, who prefers the status quo rather than being romantically attached, as one of his conquests, they never linger long enough. After the consequent balking and changing-of-mind between the conceited prince and the glamourised ugly duckling, the finale has only one way out.Caron, in retrospect, is a shade older for the role of a schoolgirl also, her singing voice is dubbed, and her dancing talent is barely given a stage to showcase due to the fact that GIGI is not a conventional Hollywood musical bombarding with impressively choreographed dancing sequences, all its eloquently lilting music numbers are integrated with the narrative; whilst Jourdan is polished in an elegant leading role which falls flat in its properly vainglorious characterisation.So, it leaves the limelight on some theatrical doyens, a breaking-the-fourth-wall Maurice Chevalier (a gambit dated back from his Lubitsch days, for example ONE HOUR WITH YOU 1932), furnishes the highlights of its Lerner-Loewe soundtrack, THANK HEAVEN FOR LITTLE GIRLS and I'M GLAD I'M NOT YOUNG ANYMORE. And an imposingly self-assured Isabel Jeans is an enthralling humdinger ingrained in her own (rather objectionable) philosophy of what makes a perfect woman. Hermione Gingold is the odd one out, winning a BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS trophy in the Golden Globes, but was snubbed by the Academy, actually, the film failed to secure any nominations for its actors. It seems, her eccentricity doesn't go long with the tenor of Gallo pablum.Having said that, GIGI's allure hasn't been completely worn away by the ruthless time, only it is rather embarrassing to call it "the best of the year", when you have VERTIGO, TOUCH OF EVIL, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF and THE DEFIANT ONES all came out in the same year, a typical victim of the "too high to live up with the bar" curse of Oscar's boomerang.