GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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.

grantss Paris, 1900. Gigi (Leslie Caron) is a young woman living with her mother. Gaston is a wealthy womaniser who has grown tired of the romantic intrigues, and everything else, of Paris. Gigi is sent to her Great Aunt Alicia to learn etiquette and the ways of a courtesan. Gaston is an old friend of Gigi's family and they have known each other for a while. Gigi and Gaston are just friends but over time their relationship develops into something more.It was with some trepidation that I watched this. I generally dislike musicals, though there are many exceptions. On the upside I really enjoyed Leslie Caron in Lili and hoped that this movie would capture that same charm that made Lili so good.Sadly, no, not really. For all the sweetness and innocence of Leslie Caron as Gigi, this movie is quite dull and unengaging. It's not even due to it being a musical - the plot is bland and uninteresting. I really don't care about the pretentious, snooty ways of French high society and Machiavellian romantic machinations. The fact that many of the machinations seem to be about old men chasing around very young women/girls, and reveling in this, makes the movie a touch creepy too.The music is of the usual intrusive variety, i.e. song suddenly appears in the middle of dialogue and doesn't really fit in very well, and is largely forgettable. Somehow this movie won the 1959 Best Picture Oscar. How this beat Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and The Defiant Ones, I do not know.

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.

gavin6942 Weary of the conventions of Parisian society, a rich playboy (Louis Jourdan) and a youthful courtesan-in-training enjoy a platonic friendship, but it may not stay platonic for long.This is apparently a film about fashion, because Gigi is all about fancy clothes. When bundled up, she looks very much like Madeleine (which, for all I know, is normal in France). But underneath? Some bold, wild patterns! Gigi is a role that seemed tailor-made for Audrey Hepburn, and I guess that some people wanted her to have it, though Leslie Caron nails it. Is Caron as big a name as Audrey? Goodness, no. But perhaps she ought to be.