jbirks106
and what passes for a plot is ridiculous. I'd love to provide spoilers for this overrated movie but there's nothing to spoil. The songs are trite at best, creepy at worst, and ineptly dubbed. The acting is adequate, but a 27 yo. Leslie Caron trying to pass for a coquette is a real stretch. Chevalier is entertaining playing himself, but he's absent for such long stretches you forget what he's doing there when he returns.Speaking of, what do any of these people do? Bored bachelor Gaston is evidently rich enough to rent out an opera house every night for his suarees (breathlessly and ludicrously reported in every newspaper in Paris) yet has time to cavort in complete anonymity whenever the plot feels like it. He has enough money to buy off his erstwhile girlfriend's beau, solely for the purpose of driving her to yet another suicide attempt? I can't believe any of this makes sense even for fin de siecle Paris. I also can't believe it won 9 Academy Awards.
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a carefree singsong style, GIGI is a delightful if not equally patronising anachronism, formulaically pontificates with outdated chivalry and self-praised upper-class etiquette with a way too serious face, it might encapsulate the zeitgeist, but for modern viewers, to quote Gaston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.
oOoBarracuda
What an odd film; an even odder Best Picture winner. Mental note, I need to see the rest of the nominees from 1958's Academy Awards to see if it was just a slow year for film or if Gigi has simply lost its luster. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Leslie Caron in the titular role, Gigi tells the story of family conformity and growing up while already having your life planned out for you. The curve ball with this film is that this family is grooming Gigi to be a mistress; I told you this was an odd film.Gigi opens in a park in Paris, with a character named Honoré Lachaille (Maurice Chevalier) breaking the 4th wall right down and conversing directly with the audience. This man proved to be the uncle of Gaston Lachaille (Louis Jourdan), a wealthy aristocrat who provides Gigi with some respite from her lessons to play cards and enjoy her youth. It is not only Gigi who is being granted a respite when Gaston visits, for he is also weary of the life of a wealthy Parisian. Gaston is quite bored with the high society life and the women he I supposed to be dating. Gigi, though she is being raised by her strict Grandmother and enduring lessons in becoming a cultured woman to better be a mistress to men, Gigi is youthful and maintains a fun, playful relationship with Gaston. As Gigi matures and Gaston finds himself increasingly more dissatisfied with his life and relationships, a love starts to blossom. Guided all throughout the film by Gaston's fun-loving uncle, Honoré Lachaille; Gigi is a fun movie despite its oddities.Of course, the most blatantly obvious oddity is the fact that Gaston is an older friend of Gigi's in the beginning of the film. An older man; Gaston sees Gigi mature, and when this platonic friendship evolves into a sexual attraction, it is a little unsettling. What is also bizarre about this film is that the audience watches Gigi take her "lessons" from her mature Aunt, lessons Gigi dreads and despises, all the while made clear that the women in her family are not women that marry. It was difficult for me to watch an innocent young girl be bred for a life of male servitude, when all she wanted to do was be among her friends and the trees, enjoying life like a young girl of her age should have been. It's always a little tough to watch someone's life be so strictly planned out for them, the all too common occurrence that this is. The tone of the movie was just off; we were given the wonderful jovial uncle, singing such songs as "Thank Heaven for Little Girls", coupled with a former lover committing suicide and a girl getting primed for life as a mistress. Also, with the interesting camera devices used; freeze frames and breaking the fourth wall, to name a few, I got the feeling that this musical couldn't decide if it wanted to be a comedy or a tragedy.I'm not sure what type of audience to recommend this film to. Perhaps, only the most devout fans of musicals are the ones that will appreciate this film. Aside from the fun unconventional film uses in the film, Gigi fell flat. I can only surmise after viewing this film, that 1958 must have been an incredibly meager year for great films, in the Academy's view, anyway.
