Gigi [Blu-ray]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Leslie Caron plays Gigi, a young girl raised by two veteran Parisian courtesans (Hermione Gingold and Isabel Jeans) to be the mistress of wealthy young Gaston (Louis Jourdan). When Gaston falls in love with Gigi and asks her to be his wife, Jeans is appalled: never has anyone in their family ever stooped to anything so bourgeois as marriage! Weaving in and out of the story is Maurice Chevalier as an aging boulevardier who, years earlier, had been in love with Gingold's character. Chevalier gets most of the best Lerner & Loewe tunes, including Thank Heaven for Little Girls, I'm Glad I'm Not Young Any More, and his matchless duet with Gingold, I Remember it Well. Caron's best number (dubbed by Betty Wand) is The Night They Invented Champagne while Jourdan gets the honor of introducing the title song. Filmed on location in Paris, Gigi won several Oscars, including Best Picture; it also represented the successful American movie comeback of Chevalier, who thanks to this film was "forgiven" for his reputed collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
• Audio: Dolby TrueHD
• Subtitle: Eng/Fre/Spa/Fi/It/
• Features:
  • Commentary by historian Jeanine Basinger with Leslie Caron
  • Thank heaven! the making of Gigi - sparking new documentary about the trubulent creation of a musical classic featuring Leslie Caron and Vincente Minnelli
  • New digial transfer form restored picture and audio elements, including soundtrack rematered in Dolby Digital 5.1 1949 nonmusical first screen version of Gigi, starring Daniele Delorme in the title role and directed by Jacqueline Audry
  • Vintage short The Million Dollar Nickel
  • Classic cinemascope
  • Cartoon the Vanishing Duck
  • Theatrical trailer

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Won Best Adapted Screenplay - 1958 (Alan Jay Lerner)
•     Won Best Art Direction - 1958 (Keogh Gleason, William Horning, Henry W. Grace, Preston Ames)
•     Won Best Color Cinematography - 1958 (Joseph Ruttenberg)
•     Won Best Costume Design - 1958 (Cecil Beaton)
•     Won Best Director - 1958 (Vincente Minnelli)
•     Won Best Editing - 1958 (Adrienne Fazan)
•     Won Best Musical Score - 1958 (Andre Previn)
•     Won Best Picture - 1958 (Arthur Freed)
•     Won Best Song - 1958 (Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner)

• British Academy of Film and Television Arts

•     Nominated Best British Film - 1959 (Vincente Minnelli)

• Directors Guild of America

•     Won Best Director - 1958 (Vincente Minnelli)

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Won Best Director - 1958 (Vincente Minnelli)
•     Won Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Pic - 1958 (Hermione Gingold)
•     Won Best Picture - Musical - 1958
•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comed - 1958 (Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jordan)
•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Com - 1958 (Leslie Caron)

• Library of Congress

•     Won U.S. National Film Registry - 1990

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Picture - 1958

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Leslie Caron - Gigi
       Maurice Chevalier - Honore Lachaille
       Louis Jourdan - Gaston Lachaille
       Hermione Gingold - Mme. Alvarez
       Eva Gabor - Liane d'Exelmans
       Isabel Jeans - Aunt Alicia
       Jacques Bergerac - Sandomir
       John Abbott - Manuel
       Dorothy Neumann - Designer

• Director:

  Vincente Minnelli

• Producer:

  Arthur Freed

• Book Author:

  Colette

• Play Author:

  Anita Loos

• Screenwriter:

  Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe

• Cinematographer:

  Joseph Ruttenberg, Ray June

• Composer (Music Score):

  Alan Jay Lerner, Andre Previn, Frederick Loewe

• Musical Arrangement:

  Alexander Courage

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Andre Previn

• Editor:

  Adrienne Fazan

• Production Designer:

  Cecil Beaton

• Art Director:

  Preston Ames, William Horning

• Set Designer:

  Cecil Beaton, F. Keogh Gleason, Henry W. Grace

• Costume Designer:

  Cecil Beaton

• Makeup:

  Charles Parker, William J. Tuttle

• Lyricist:

  Alan Jay Lerner

• Scenic Artist:

  Cecil Beaton

REVIEW:

• Vincente Minnelli's Gigi was arguably the last great movie of the director's career and the last great musical made at MGM. It was an improbable hit in its time, and it is often denigrated as a poor relation of My Fair Lady, which, like Gigi, was the work of composer-screenwriters Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. In 1958, it had been five years since Minnelli's last successful musical The Band Wagon, and the genre was believed to be running out of steam at the box office. This project, based on a Colette story about a young courtesan matched up with a wealthy man, seemed unlikely material in the supposedly staid 1950s. But Lerner and Loewe's script downplayed the morally equivocal nature of the adults and the title character (without totally losing it) and wrapped the story around a score that drew on the richest melodic influences of My Fair Lady, which was just going into previews at the time. Gigi even inherited one song dropped from the stage version of My Fair Lady, and the score gave it the feel of a 19th century operetta, with the sweeping, melodic elegance of the Viennese tradition and the sauciness of its Parisian counterpart. It was Minnelli's enviable task to make all of this look beautiful, shooting partly in Paris (a privilege he'd been denied on An American In Paris) with a dream cast. The result was a movie that pleased audiences; got away with presenting a tale of prostitution to a general audience in a decade when the screen supposedly didn't even acknowledge the existence of moral terpitude, much less allow its heroes and heroines to have engaged in it (see Detective Story); and introduced a brace of superb songs that still play to audiences. Gigi was the last great score and script that Minnelli ever got to work with, and it is the last MGM musical that is essential viewing even for non-fans of Minnelli and the movie musical. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi