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Title:	Gigi (1958)
Studio Line:	MGM Young Gigi is all arms and legs and giddy enthusiasm. Can this irrepressible tomboy be turned into a courtesan elegant enough to conquer love-besotted, turn-of-the-century Paris? Mais Oui! And what happens when love conquers Gigi? Ooh la la! Director Vincente Minnelli and writer Alan Jay Lerner adapt Colette's novel to the screen, combining a sparkling Lerner and Loewe score, resplendent sets and costumes, sumptuous on-location shooting and a renowned cast into a musical romp as bubbly as champagne. The cast includes Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold and the incomparable Maurice Chevalier. Whether singing the praises of young love ("Thank Heaven For Little Girls") or love long past ("I Remember It Well"), Chevalier is gallantry personified. So, come dine at Maxim's and whirl through the Tuileries with Gigi, the film "aglitter and aglow with songs, enchantment and charm to spare," --Newsweek.
Director:	Vincent Minnelli
Cast:	Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold, Eva Gabor, Jacques Bergerac, Isabel Jeans
Academy Awards:	Wonf for Best Picture; Best Director; Best Screenplay; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration; Best Costume Design; Best Cinematography; Best Film Editing; Best Music; Best Song-"Gigi", 1959.
DVD:	Widescreen 2.35:1, standard 1.33:1; audio English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround; subtitles English, French; single sided - dual layered; 36 chapters; rated G; 116 min.; $24.98; street date 5/2/00.
Supplements:	8-Page Booklet; Theatrical Trailer.
Purchase:	DVD | Music soundtrack - Frederick Loewe

Picture/Sound/Extras: B-/B-/D- Yay! My trek through four straight Best Picture-winning musicals nears its end! Despite my distaste for the genre, I found West Side Story and especially My Fair Lady to offer surprisingly enjoyable experiences. Would 1958's Gigi make it a hat trick? Nope, though the prospect seemed possible when one considers Gigi's pedigree. After all, it was penned by Lerner and Loewe, the team that experienced so much success with the stage production of MFL, and it even shared some of the same talent with that movie, such as production designer Cecil Beaton. Gigi displays other qualities in common with MFL, such as a similar plot. Basically both films concern the social grooming of a couple of young women. However, Eliza Doolittle was taken from a situation in which she was poor, uncouth and unhappy to a place where she became successful and loved; although they occurred for callous and mercenary reasons, clearly Henry Higgins' interventions were positive. The same is not so certain in Gigi. At the start, our title character - played by lovely Leslie Caron, who seemed believably teenaged although she was actually 27 years old at the time - is a happy, exuberant young lady in turn of the 20th century Paris. Playboy Gaston (Louis Jourdan) is bored with all of the silly social climbing in the city and he becomes taken with Gigi's irrepressible charm. So far so good, right? Sounds like a standard formula for a nice romantic ending. Well, yes and no. (Note: if you don't want to know how the movie concludes, jump ahead now! I try to avoid anything that resembles a spoiler, but I need to discuss the ending to make it clear why I disliked the film.) Once it becomes clear to Gigi's meddling Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans) that she can latch onto hunky Gaston, she intensifies the grooming lessons she'd already put into place for Gigi. Toward the end of the film, it becomes clear that these have made Gigi into exactly the kind of vapid, status-obsessed bimbo of the sort Gaston had become tired. When he recognizes this, he initially goes ballistic, but then mysteriously rethinks things and goes back to hook up with her again. The end, but was it a happy or logical one? Not in my book. I kept wondering if I missed something. I expected a scene in which Gaston told Gigi that he didn't care about her refined personality and he wanted the exciting little babe she used to be. However, that never occurred. Gaston comes back to Gigi in her phony and manipulated state, theoretically to live happily ever after. Score one for the Stepford wives. Even if I'd enjoyed the prior portions of the film, that ending would have left me cold. As it stands, the majority of Gigi is a lovely trifle. It presents some gorgeous vistas and costumes, and the tunes are relatively tolerable, though I must admit that hearing 70-year-old Maurice Chevalier croon "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" seems creepy in today's climate; it's not actually a paean to pedophilia - after all, Chevalier makes it clear he digs little girls because they get big eventually - but it appears uncomfortably close to that territory. In any case, other than pretty pictures and some hummable songs, Gigi has little to offer. I got the feeling the whole project existed to capitalize on the stage success of MFL. Apparently it took quite a while to negotiate screen rights for the latter, so Gigi looks like an attempt to cash in via a similar property. It doesn't work. Yes, MFL features a pretty slim plot as well, but at least the characters are interesting and the situations entertaining. Nothing in Gigi seems clever or compelling, and that ending really harms the entire project. Ultimately, it's a dull, lifeless production that made me wish I was watching MFL instead. The DVD: Gigi appears in both its original theatrical aspect ratio of approximately 2.35:1 and in a fullscreen edition on this double-sided, single-layered DVD; the letterboxed image has been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. Only the widescreen side was rated for this review. In general, the movie looks fairly good, but it shows some problems that run throughout the picture. For the most part, the film seems adequately crisp and defined, but many scenes display a dull softness that makes them appear vaguely unfocussed. Some of this seems to stem from the film stocks of the era, which often display similar kinds of thickness, but I thought Gigi was a bit more tentative in this regard than most. Nonetheless, the softness is fairly minor for the most part; it's only occasionally that shots appear more significantly hazy. Moiré effects and jagged edges were not problems, and I noticed only mild artifacting from the anamorphic downconversion on my 4X3 TV. The print itself seemed fairly clean. I saw little grain, and the other flaws were largely limited to periodic speckles and a little grit. The frame jumps oddly at one point during "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" but otherwise, the movie appeared stable and fresh. Colors suffer slightly from some of the oversaturation typical of the stock. At times this results in very lovely and bright hues, but it also corrupts some parts of the image. For example, I never found skin tones to appear natural; they always seemed excessively heavy. Much of the movie looks terrific in regard to the colors, but a fair amount of variation exists. Black levels appeared acceptable deep and rich, though they could be slightly too dark at times; I noticed that hair occasionally seemed ill-defined because of this. Shadow detail wasn't much of a concern in this brightly-lit movie. In fact, the only time I really noticed it was toward the end when Jourdan does a night-time number. I thought the shadows were appropriately opaque without much heaviness. Ultimately, Gigi looks pretty good for a more than 40-year-old film, but these few concerns keep it from appearing as terrific as other musicals like West Side Story or My Fair Lady. Here's a new one on me: Gigi offers a Dolby Digital 3.0 soundtrack. That simply means that only the front three speakers are active. As with the picture, the audio has some serious strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side, the music displays fine stereo separation and breadth, and the songs all sound very clear and crisp; since this is a musical, it's very important that the tunes are portrayed in the best possible light, and this presentation does nicely. Dialogue is a different matter. For the most part, I found speech to sound clean and acceptably natural. Recordings from the era always betray some thinness, but the dialogue here seemed relatively warm. Unfortunately, the sound mixers went a little nuts with the three-channel capabilities and spread speech all over the place. It jumps from center to side to side with abandon, and it can become distracting. It's nice that they showed some ambition, but it doesn't work very well, as the dialogue sticks too harshly to each speaker when it moves; there's no smoothness to the transitions. Effects also pan between channels, but this is done to a more gentle degree so it's not as problematic. Nonetheless, every once in a while the audio can't keep up with the action; the object will reach the side of the screen before the accompanying effect can get there. I also noticed occasional lip-synch problems, which were more evident during songs. Some of the speech was dubbed awkwardly, and at times during music, the mouths just don't match the lyrics well. I don't know if this was always a problem with the movie or if it is new to this DVD transfer, but it can be a distraction. I also heard a mild layer of tape hiss during much of the film. Despite all of these flaws, it must be remembered that Gigi was recorded more than four decades ago, so it can't compete with more modern affairs. Enough of it works well to earn it a solid age-curved "B-". Less acceptable are the supplemental features on the DVD. All we find is the movie's theatrical trailer. Actually, this is an interesting clip, since it shows the different ways that films were distributed back then. Apparently Gigi opened on Broadway first - as a movie, not as a show - and then spread across the country. It's funny to see them tout the film's success in a trailer for an initial release; usually those pronouncements go along with reissues, but it seems clear that this ad is for the movie's original general run. In this day and age when most films go from screen to video in half a year or less, it's also stunning to hear a critic's statement that the movie may run for three years! I don't know if it displayed such longevity, but if that kind of run did occur, I know Gigi didn't deserve such success. The film is a triumph of form over substance; while Gigi looks lovely, it portrays a shallow plot with some distasteful components. The DVD offers fairly good picture and sound but skimps on extras. Gigi isn't a terrible movie, but it certainly didn't merit its long list of Academy Awards and it isn't a DVD you should pursue. Menu: DVD Movie Guide | Archive | Top