"Gigi" was made into a modest French film in 1948 by Jacqueline Audry, and ten years later, was brought to the screen as an Oscar-winning musical film dancing off with no fewer than nine Academy Awards including Best Picture. All her provocative works (sometimes scandalous) were written with extraordinary insight, sensitivity, and sensuality. Her main themes were joys and pains of love and female sexuality in the male-dominated world. Only drawback: it's a bit overlong and could have used some editing for the slow moments.Īdmired by novelists as diverse as Jean Cocteau and François Mauriac, Colette was arguably the finest French writer of her sex in the 20th century.
By all means, it has to be considered one of the last great musicals from the MGM period.
While, in my opinion, the score does not surpass "My Fair Lady" in range and cleverness, it certainly did well enough in winning nine Oscars, including the one for Best Picture of 1958. But there is no denying that no matter how distasteful some will find the story of training a girl to become a courtesan to be (or how politically incorrect by today's standards), the score is as sparkling as the champagne they sing about. Leslie Caron makes an enchanting Gigi, Louis Jourdan is impossibly handsome as Gaston, and all of the other players were cast with a discerning eye. The outdoor shots are just as lavish-Louis Jourdan singing the title song among the fountains and architecture of French landmarks. Vincente Minnelli wrings every bit of artistic decor in the trappings, giving the viewer an almost claustrophobic feeling for the interior scenes. Production-wise, it's almost too lavish for its own good. And yet they work beautifully for this story set in the city of love and starring Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Herminone Gingold and Maurice Chevalier. The songs all have a "My Fair Lady" similarity - from 'The Night They Invented Champagne' to 'Gigi' to 'The Parisiennes' - all bear the flavor of their previous work in sound and content. As they reminisce about their own love affair in their white suits (was she the love of his life?) they contribute the film's finest moment: the duet "I Remember It Well (visually breathtaking against a sky which changes from pastel blue to coral to a flaming orange sunset)." The DVD, set to wide-screen, is the only way to enjoy something like this.It's almost as if Lerner & Lowe were competing with themselves when they decided to write the music for "Gigi" - once again, a story about a girl being transformed into a young woman of charm (a Parisian courtesan) just as Eliza was being molded into another creature by Professor Higgins. After more than an hour of boasting about conquering girls young enough to be his granddaughters, he does a kind of about-face when he begins a twilight terrace scene with 'grandmama' Hermoine Gingold. (Remarkably ahead of its time, when you think about it.) There is also something of an enigma in Maurice Chevalier, who, while being a favorite with audiences, is- let's face it- a dirty old man. The lovely Leslie Caron shines as the title character who reveals to her already shocked family that she's not as naive as they seem to think in the ways of courtship and will not give herself to a man that she doesn't actually love. Is your suspense of imagination so narrow that the same musical team cannot create more than one score without crucifixions for similarities? (Lerner & Lowe also wrote BRIGADOON and PAINT YOUR WAGON.are they also rip-offs of MFL?) Anyway, the film- resplendent in set pieces, cinematography, and especially costumes, is an execution in contradictions: it takes a group of less-than-respectable characters and makes them respectable. While both stories have a central female character, one is being groomed in elocution while the other is being groomed as a hook- that is, as a coquette.
This is an adaptation of a Colette novel, not a Bernard Shaw play. how is this MY FAIR LADY? Over and over again, like a herd, everyone is writing that it's a copy, or a remake, or very similar to.
0 kommentar(er)
