Official Synopsis:

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 girlish gawkishness to cultured glamour before our eyes, yearns for something money can't buy. Producer Arthur Freed, director Vincente Minnelli and a cast rife with Gallic charm join for this lavish winner of nine Academy Awards including Best Picture. Its Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe songs sparkle like "The Night They Invented Champagne" or caress with title-tune tenderness. "I Remember It Well", Maurice Chevalier sings to Hermione Gingold. You'll remember Gigi forever.
  
Our Take:

Once one gets past the sexist (to say the least) premise of Gigi (the story of a young girl being trained to grow up as a courtesan), there is a beautiful musical romance that is deserving of all the praise heaped upon it.  Gigi may strike some as somewhat similar to My Fair Lady, and it should, as it’s the product of composer/songwriter/screenwriter team Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.  For my money, I’ll take the less savory and decidedly less British Gigi any day of the week.  Director Vincente Minnelli makes excellent use of his Parisian setting as he crams in every ounce of beauty he possibly can into the picture, be it through the lush interior set design, lavish costume design, or the beautiful staging of outdoor scenes in front of the many landmarks of Paris. 

Of course, Gigi is a musical, one produced by Arthur Freed for MGM, so it joins the company of the numerous excellent musicals to come out of the Freed Factory.  The songs in Gigi are simply landmark songs.  This was the first time I had seen the film and I was shocked when I realized how many of the songs I already know.  My personal favorite is the beautifully performed and staged (against a gorgeous seaside backdrop) duet “I Remember It Well” performed by Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold.  “It’s a Bore” performed by Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, and John Abbot is a case of perfect character exposition through song.  By the end of “It’s a Bore”, the audience will know everything they need to know about Louis Jourdan’s Gaston for the rest of the film.  Being a Vincente Minnelli musical there had to be at least one showstopper dance sequence, which comes in the inventive “Waltz at Maxim’s (She is Not Thinking of Me)” as well as “Gossip” (also set in Maxim’s).  The former is an excellent song and dance number while the latter is wonderful send-up of the pettiness of high society, but also a perfect illustration of a tabloid obsessed society that today has spread throughout society as a whole.

Gigi: Two-Disc Special Edition is much needed updating of the Warner Bros.’ 2003 release of Gigi and its most important upgrade is the inclusion of the first screen version of Gigi, a 1949 French film.  The rest of the special features are as follows:

Disc 1 -

* Audio Commentary - By Historian Jeanine Basinger with Leslie Caron.

* The Million Dollar Nickel (10 minutes) – A pro-America propaganda piece featuring foreign actors now residing in Hollywood.

* The Vanishing Duck – A vintage Hannah-Barbera-directed Tom and Jerry cartoon.

* Theatrical Trailer.

Disc 2 -

* Thank Heaven! The Making of Gigi (36 minutes) – A new documentary about the turbulent creation of a musical classic featuring Leslie Caron and Vincente Minnelli.

* Gigi (82 minutes) – 1949 non-musical French screen version of the story.  The film pales in comparison to Minnelli’s classic musical, but serves as a nice historical inclusion.  Unfortunately, due to the age and state of the print, it is not nearly as sharp a transfer as the remastered main feature.

Gigi is generally listed as one of the softer films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. While I can’t definitively state that it was the best film to come out in 1958 (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, anyone?), if a musical needed to win Best Picture, then I can certainly understand why Gigi was chosen.  Minnelli’s direction (he won Best Director) combined with Loewe and Lerner’s classic songs (the team took home Best Music, Original Song) turn what could have been a rather standard romantic tale into something truly magical.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Overall Picture:
Movie: A
DVD:  A-

- Matthew Orlando
Staff Writer