"Gigi" dominated the 1959 Academy Awards. It won nine Oscars, sweeping all the non-acting categories. Best Picture, Best Director (Vincente Minnelli), Best Adapted Screenplay (Alan Jay Lerner), Best Color Cinematography (Joseph Ruttenberg). Also best sets, best costumes, best song, best score, and best editing.
Like "My Fair Lady", "Gigi" is a musical
adaptation of a novel about a young woman who
rises from poverty to riches. Elaborately staged,
heavily orchestrated, with clever but carefully
inoffensive lyrics, both films dubbed the voice
of the female lead, as a pretty face must have a
pretty voice.
Gigi, although played by 27-year-old Leslie Caron
(the ingenue from "An American in Paris"), is a
young teenager who has lived a sheltered life
despite coming from a family of mistresses. Her
mother is an unseen minor opera singer; while she
often rehearses offscreen in another room, she
doesn't make an appearance even as Gigi is
repeatedly visited by famous wealthy playboy
Gaston (Louis Jourdan). Gigi is raised by
Hermione Gingold, and trained to be a lady by
imperious Isabel Jeans.
Gaston receives training of his own, from his
mentor and relative Honore (Maurice Chevalier).
Chevalier is most famous in America for his first
number, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" (when
Broadway next revives the play, expect 'Pretty'
to be substituted for 'Little'). However, the
best production number is "The Night They
Invented Champagne". Here, the choreography is
excellent, although it is difficult to believe
that Gigi would be able to make the wordly,
clever comments that the lyrics gives her.
The Gaston-Gigi romance provides the context for
the musical's lampooning the elaborate
Victorian-era ritual built around men obtaining
sex, and women obtaining security. They have to
work so hard at attaining their differing ends
that they can't long savor their fleeting
victories. Gaston's intensity at courtship is
contrasted with affable Honore, who pursues woman
without emotional involvement or any intentions
of marriage. "Gigi" seems to side with Honore,
despite the inevitable happy ending for Gigi and
Gaston. (64/100)
Home, motorcar, servants, the latest fashions: man-about-town Gaston (Louis Jourdan) offers them all to Gigi (Leslie Caron). But she, who s gone from ...More at Buy.com
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