Gigi (1958)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

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

"Gigi" is a coming of age story involving a girl (Leslie Caron) and the man (Louis Jourdan as Gaston) whose affections for her become romantic when she becomes a young woman.It won the Oscar for Best Film and all eight others it was nominated for after its release in 1958. On every level it was successful, but was it really the best film released that year? Probably not. However the film is charming and it does possess great production values (e.g. costuming, set design). Each scene is like a Renoir or Cassatt come alive. Filmed in France, it captures a joie de vivre that is perfectly personified by Miss Caron. Though her voice is dubbed, she embodies a spirit that infuses every scene of the film. "The Night They Invented Champagne" is the number I most enjoy, and she gives the scene the boundless energy of the cancan.But this is a victory of style over substance, because the story of "Gigi" is very simple. It lacks the depth of "My Fair Lady", for example, which followed six years later and bore striking similarities.Maurice Chevalier (as Honore Lachaille, the uncle of Gaston) and Mr. Jourdan use the same talk-singing style employed by Rex Harrison in "My Fair Lady". It does not detract from "Gigi", but it is noticeable.Some viewers might find the storyline, which deals with the education of a courtesan, less than romantic. And the film--like many others--focuses on the lifestyles of the rich. But "Gigi" is charming nonetheless. It is best to surrender to its charms and appreciate the performance of Miss Caron, whose transformation from girl to woman is flawless.

The first time i watched the movie, i felt it was a "bore". The movie hardly has any running time of the character Gigi. The characters were melodramatic and their language was a butchered version of English. I never found the most vital element of Humor missing in the movie and was totally let down after having watched musicals like Singin' in the Rain and Wizard of Oz.Well, it was quite a long time back. I must agree i matured as a person who understands movie and appreciates it and not merely judge a movie based on its efficacy in entertaining. The movie is undoubtedly an entertainer.As the movie progressed, i started to understand the uniqueness of the movie and was enthralled by the songs and art setting. The movie is set in Paris at the turn of the century and the lifestyle, sartorial, marital and tonsorial preferences of the inhabitants is discreetly presented.The songs are brilliantly written and set to euphonious background music and when i paid heed to the lyrics, i realized what i greatly missed the first time i watched it- Humor.The movie also brings forth a message that no matter how rich and famous a man is, his heart remains vacant for a woman who remains herself and not be camouflaged with book-learned principles on satisfying a man.