Gigi (1958)

Fresh and Exciting

best movie i've ever seen.

A Disappointing Continuation

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Gigi2 Out Of 5Gigi is a plot driven musical feature focusing on a tale of self-created conflicts and love. The chemistry among the characters which becomes essential in such genre features, is surprisingly dull, off putting and way too textbook for it to breed any crisp through it.It is rich on technical aspects like art design, songs, production design and background score but is unfortunately lacks captivating cinematography and fine editing. The camera work is plausible and has an amazing choreography on its favor through which the makers seek attention being well aware of it. The adaptation by Alan Jay Lerner is smart if not gripping, catchy but scattered into bits and pieces as it lacks better and definite structure. Vincent Minnelli; the director, has done a tremendous work on executing the feature despite of possessing such a wafer thin script to work on. The performance by Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Gordon is decent and convincing to the allotted part if not leaves the audience in awe of it. Gigi is an out-of-context and out-of-time portrayal of a textbook tale that may be entertaining but is more pretentious than it has the potential to.

French version of My Fair Lady. Caron and Jourdan are superb. Chevalier is charming. "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore" is a beautiful song. And there are two glorious sequences in which Gaston walks/sings through the gardens of Paris falling in love with Gigi. The first hour could have been edited down after the brittleness and general horribleness of Parisian society had been established. Of course, the attitudes of the time were appalling (you couldn't joke about attempted suicide today) and categorising how "common" someone is (as Gaston and Gigi do on their first date) is hard to watch. I hope by the end they have left behind the attitudes of the society they had both never felt comfortable in anyway - Gaston was always bored and Gigi was a bit of a tomboy and rebel.

It was quite weird watching this movie knowing virtually nothing about it. All I knew (or at least all I could remember) is that this movie won a bunch of Oscars including Best Picture. I thought that it set the record for shortest movie to win Best Picture, but I guess I got the words mixed up in my head. Instead, I believe it's the movie with the shortest "title" to win Best Picture. It's certainly not brief, but not epic either. Anyway, the odd title of the film actually refers to the name of the main character who lives in France in 1900 and is learning how to get a husband.What's great is that there's this guy who keeps popping in and out of the movie to talk to the audience and sing a song. I just love consistency like that. You might not have known that this was a musical and the songs are a lot of fun. The first third of the movie doesn't even focus that much on Gigi. We instead get a bunch of scenes of other people and how their love lifes are doing. Gigi really does grow as a character and the resolution is great. With the Oscars coming up, I'm so glad to have seen a Best Picture winner. It's a very light hearted movie with catchy songs and I really do love the sets. Everything is just so wonderfully bright and colorful. ***1/2

It's the start of 20th century Paris. Honoré Lachaille (Maurice Chevalier) is an old cynical playboy. His nephew Gaston (Louis Jourdan) is a famous womanizer and bored with everything except his friendship with Madame Alvarez (Hermione Gingold) and her young fun-loving granddaughter Gigi (Leslie Caron). Gigi is sent to her Great Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans) to be groomed as a courtesan. Gaston and Gigi wish to have their old relationship but are forced to change.Alan Jay Lerner delivers a 'My Fair Lady'-like script. In fact, it's sold based on Lerner-Loewe's Broadway success. The visual is a brightly-colored over-the-top extravaganza. There are great catchy tunes like "I Remember It Well" and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls". However, this is too broad. It's too stage-like in its execution at times. This is a big French meal that is too rich for my taste.