Gigi

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, funny, romantic. Louis Jourdan shines!
Review: Gigi is wonderful! Louis Jourdan is simply beautiful, and Maurice Chevaliere is wonderful. I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys lighthearted love stories.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo! Bravo!
Review: I think that GIGI is the best musical ever. I just love Aunt Alicia and her sister. Hermoine Gingold is fabulous. This movie takes you into a world that you don't want to come out of. If only they would make more movies like this today. My grandaughter absolutely adores it. I want to watch Gigi over and over and does not want it to end. I get lost in the movie and wish I could stay there forever. It is absolutely fantastic.!!!!! More young people should be able to see this movie. Whomever have not seen this movie they are missing out on life itself. Julia Reid

Rating:
Summary: Romantic Musicals Don't Come Any Better Than This
Review: There are a great deal of fine musicals MGM has done in the past. But the 1958 Lerner and Lowe "Gigi" based on the French novella is exquisite, romantic and intimate. Beautiful, youthful Gigi (Leslie Caron) is trained by her grandmother to be a courtesan and to attract the attentions of the extremely wealthy and popular Gaston Lachaille (Jordain). Chevalier makes a terrific performance as the elderly and noble Honore, who sings "Thank Heavens For Little Girls" and "I remember it well". The title song "Gigi" and the music, conducted and arranged by the excellent Andre Previn, provides the film with a sumptuous French flavor. The film is heartwarming and romantic. Few musicals capture a simple, fresh love story like this one, without many of the usual complications. A five star movie and musical. If you want the soundtrack, go and get it. It makes an excellent companion to the movie. Leslie Caron is a knock-out. With Audrey Hepburn, she was the most beautiful and sophisticated personas to grace the screen in the fifties, coming as close to royalty as film actresses could get. And suprisingly, both actresses look somewhat similar. Vincente Minneli, Liza Minelli's father, directs a wonderful musical, and has forever made a name for himself. Five stars. Viva Minelli! Viva Maurice Chavalier and Viva Leslie Caron!

Rating:
Summary: Can't I give it NO stars?
Review: I love musicals. I was raised on them. I love old movies in general and have made tham a hobby of mine.

This is simply the worst musical adapted to film I have ever seen. The music is bad, the scenery is fake (except for the few shots of Paris thrown in), the acting is mediocre, and the characters are really unappealing. The only good thing about this movie was the wardrobe.

This is not a family film. This is not a film about innocence and loosing it. If you want innocence, beauty, and good music with talented actors and excellent scenery and cinematography, go get The Sound of Music. That is quite simply one hundred times better than Gigi.

Pure and simple, this is a movie about the training up a 16-17 year old girl in 1900 Paris to be a professional mistress/lover to rich men. That is what the women of Gigi's family do, they are professional mistresses until their youth fades (at about 30) and they are either left in seclusion with only their jewelry and memories to comfort them or in total poverty, unloved and unwanted. Not a particularly appealing prospect to most women in 1900 much less the year 2005 I am sure.

The men in the story are quite capable, due to their wealth and social status, to chase skirts until they are far past their prime. The character played by Maurice Chevalier is chasing around women a third his age throughout the entire movie. He glibly remarks that a women of 30 is really passed it and not worth his time. This coming from a man pushing 70 who has made his life's work leching and chasing any woman under 20 who will share his bed. He has tutored and advised his bored with the world rich nephew (who himself is probably 35) in this "art." This character, played by Louis Jourdan, is the first customer for our young Gigi, played by Leslie Caron. He must sign a contract guaranteeing the girl certain payments (a house, car, clothes, jewels) in return for services, everything from appearing with him in public and spending time with him and of course, sex. Funny, sex is what is expected of this girl yet she is the only one that speaks honestly of it in the whole movie and she is chided for doing so. I guess it is okay to DO IT but unseemly to talk about it. This is no innocent, unknowing flower.. no more innocent than any other 16 year old girl. I was 16 once and I know what that means. Though she has never experienced it, she understands what is expected of her and yet she knows she wants something better. But her family and her rich playboy admirer knows what is best for her.

To make a long story short, the girl reluctantly decides she "is better being miserable" with the lecherous rich man whom she likes than without him. He will shower her with gifts and attention for a short time and since that is what she was born and bred for, better be with him than someone else. The life of a kept woman does not hold much appeal for her but she has little choice. She relents despite her want to live a respectable, happy life. In the end, the leching playboy sees that he actually loves the girl and doesn't want to destroy her by playing with her and throwing her away to another man in a few months when he tires of her. He asks her to marry him. That will make an interesting marriage.

I can think of a thousand other stories that would make far better plot lines for a musical.. yet somehow the selling of a young girl into socially acceptable prostitution held such a delightful hold on 1958 Hollywood that it gave this movie an insane number of Oscars. Thus once more proving that anything can win a golden statuette in Hollywood.

Rating:
Summary: Not for feminists OR musical lovers
Review: As a die-hard feminist (who, however, respects the guys for good things that they do), I must say this movie annoyed me major time. I can see how some people would enjoy it - my grandma certainly did - but if you share my point of view about little girls, you'd probably dislike this movie just as much. I understand that this is the way it was in France at the turn of the century, but that's no excuse.

I really love old musicals - watching them over and over again, singing along, watching the dance numbers. This movie was a disappointment even as a musical. I haven't seen one decent choreographed number. Truth must be told about some songs. "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" is a perverted song, implying that girls are just objects for the male population. Sure, I'd thank heaven for little girls, if it meant to tell that they'll grow up and become independent women. I'd thank heaven for little boys too. Just kids in general. They are the future of the world. When they're five or six or seven, they have big dreams -- it's later in life that the society convinces them that they can't achieve them and should settle for much less.

I was very excited by one song - "The Parisians". I thought maybe Gigi would grow up to be a women's right seeker. The turn of the 20th century is when it all started. But no such luck -- she gave in and became a high society groupie (for however short time). It just shows her lack of real personality. I suppose turn-of-the-century Paris did that to people. I'm just glad I wasn't there at the time.

This movie looks very pretty. I can say that the best thing to do with it is to turn off the sound, and look at the colours.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous movie, but something's missing from this edition...
Review: Lerner and Loewe, and the scrumptious Nouveau brilliance of Cecil Beaton...what's not to like? I love this movie, and have owned this edition for some time. However, it seems to be missing two segments that I recall from seeing the movie in the theater at revivals: 1) There's an extended soft-focus montage of shots of Gigi in the middle of the musical number, "Gigi," in which Gaston (Louis Jourdan) is supposedly flooded with memories of the girl and realizes he's been in love with her for some time. This appears to have been cut from this DVD edition. 2) Though I can't be 100% certain, I believe Gigi wanders around the gardens a bit more, before launching into "I Don't Understand the Parisians," harumphing at length about her countrymens' insatiable appetite for amour. I don't see this on the DVD either. The DVD itself is pretty stripped-down, with virtually no extra features (except for some footage of an opening-night gala).

Many negative reviews here have commented on the inaccessibilities of a story set more than a century ago in a remote culture, or the inappropriate relationship between Gaston, ostensibly in his mid-30s, and the 15-year-old (in the Colette novella, anyway) Gigi. I suppose everything has to be about us, our times, and our mores?

"Thank heaven," not every story is about our own lives, our own cultures, or our own times. Life would be unbearably dull if all the world's stories were updated to add that focus-group-tested current of feminism, or attitudes about relations between the sexes that were carefully shopped by marketing flunkies to reflect prevailing American tastes. This story is a macro-focus view of a unique sliver of history and culture that, had it not been for Colette's sketch of it, none of us here would have any experience of, whatsoever. It might flatter us to have Caron, in her 1900 couture, suddenly rattle off pert Rory Gilmore-isms about dating and equality, but is that why we read and watch movies? To be flattered? To have ourselves and our beliefs reflected back at us, without exception? I'd hope not!!

Rating:
Summary: Radiant and very stylized film !
Review: The bad manners in the table have destroyed much more families than the infidelity .
This is the meaning advise given for the aunt of Gigi in the first minutes of the film that somehow illustrates the path of this entertaining and winner movie . Those elementary and clever tips will serve her to unfold her in the high society . Elegant musical , one of the fines with the glamour of Maurice Chevalier making the role of master ceremony who introduces us in the picture and finally he will be the farewell emissary. The sketch wardrobe is simply spectacular .
Based in Colette 's story and filmed entirely in Paris , this movie won Nine Academy Awards in 1958 .
The last major picture of Vincent Minelli.



Rating:
Summary: Paris was Never so Delightful
Review: A delightful musical about an unrefined teenage Gigi who learns to become a lady in a spring Paris. Sweet and extravagant. The costumes are magnificent, the songs are playful, but most delightful is Maurice Chevalier. Leslie Caron is plucky, and Louis Jourdan is affectedly bored. Reminds me of My Fair Lady, another wonderful musical made of the same time with Audrey Hepburn.

Rating:
Summary: Gigi-- the dark side
Review: Part of the charm of this movie is that it deals with adult issues but can still be viewed by families with children. Girls will love watching Gigi learn to eat politely and will laugh at her scorn for lady-like clothes and romance. Adults, however, can see a deeper meaning: Gigi is being prepared by her aunt and grandmother to be a demi-mondelle, a courtesan or kept woman, sort of a glorified prostitute. She is aware of this when she says to Gaston, "You will tire of me and I will only have to go into another man's bed." (Yes, I did say the movie could be seen by children; evetyhing is done and said very tastefully.)

Another issue lurking beneath the surface is the issue of abuse. Like the earlier movie Lolita, we now see issues of older men/teenaged girls differently. With Leslie Caron, a grown woman, playing the part, we forget that the character, Gigi, is really still a school girl. Gaston Lachaille is bored with all the courtesans he has dallied with and decides that Gigi can put the missing zip into his life. Pun intended. Think of a 35 year old man dating a high school sophomore and you get the real underlying story, and the aunt and grandmother are too deeply in denial to figure it out. He's really a shoddy, self-centered character beneath his polish and this is part of what makes the movie so fascinating. It would make a terrific movie for discussion in a college-level psychology or sociology class.

Rating:
Summary: People this is a BOOK, not a DVD
Review: I just need to point out, given that all of the reviews on this BOOK are about the MOVIE, that this item is the novel, Gigi, not the movie.

And it's in French.

Read what you are reviewing before you review it please.

Thank you!