The Oscar-winning MGM musical “Gigi” has been reissued in a whimsical and less than definitive two-disc “special edition” from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its debut as a musical at Broadway’s Royale Theatre.
An enduring high point in Hollywood lyrical finesse and sumptuous period evocation, the movie contrived to celebrate dual aspects of femininity, the physical ripening and even more gratifying emotional integrity of a teenage French girl, circa 1900.
This disarming blend of seduction and homage, which proved the role of a lifetime for Leslie Caron, derived from a novella by Colette (1873-1954), who had survived a topsy-turvy, seminotorious romantic history of her own. A checkered past seemed to reward her with a peculiar ironic authority when envisioning how a girl raised by retired courtesans to become a precocious mantrap could enchant a wealthy suitor into proposing a respectable match. In fact, his offer of marriage is treated as such a shock by Colette that she humorously declines to finish the proposal while concluding the story.
Gaston Lachaille, something of a literal sugar daddy, because the family fortune depends on sugar manufacturing, addresses Gigi’s grandmother and guardian: “Mamita, will you do me the honor, the favor, give me the infinite joy of bestowing on me the hand. …” It remained for theatrical and movie adaptations to complete the request, an opportunity beautifully realized by Louis Jourdan as the supremely eligible Gaston of the Alan Jay Lerner-Vincente Minnelli classic.
Hermione Gingold’s simple reply as Mamita, “Thank heaven,” not only adds a lovely grace note to the scene but provides the bridge to Maurice Chevalier’s reprise of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” the movie’s opening and closing song.
At the time, all savvy moviegoers knew that “Gigi” was the immediate successor to “My Fair Lady,” the pre-eminent Broadway success of spring 1956. One song, “Say a Prayer for Me,” was revived for “Gigi” after being scuttled during the tryout period of “My Fair Lady.” There are self-evident affinities between “Why Can’t a Woman” and “I Don’t Understand the Parisians,” between “The Rain in Spain” and “The Night They Invented Champagne,” between “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” and the title song of “Gigi,” also known as “Gaston’s Soliloquy.”
The “My Fair Lady” LP was familiar to millions, and they proved receptive to the variations in “Gigi,” where Mr. Lerner’s flair for introspective numbers acquired a felicitous French shading, whether self-argumentative or wistful. The first movie trailer, one of the supplements in the DVD set, hailed “Gigi” as a “new fair lady.”
Bosley Crowther’s rave in the New York Times welcomed the movie as such an astute companion piece that spectators didn’t need to get impatient about a film version of “My Fair Lady,” which took another six years to materialize.
Mr. Lerner had collaborated with Mr. Minnelli, the director, and producer Arthur Freed on the Academy Award-winning musical of 1951, “An American in Paris.” Mr. Lerner owed the studio another picture and began his first draft of a “Gigi” screenplay within weeks of the triumphant “My Fair Lady” opening. He was even encouraged to take up residence in Paris. Later, a good deal of the movie was shot there, compensating for the state of illustrative exile imposed on “An American in Paris,” filmed in its entirety at MGM’s Culver City, Calif., studio.
The team got its money’s worth of Paris while starting production during the late summer in 1957. So much so that they were forced to return to Culver City already $500,000 over budget.
MGM was alert to a French movie version of “Gigi” in 1949 (a welcome supplement to the new DVD edition, although a mint-condition print was evidently not to be found) and then a theatrical version of 1953 that starred Audrey Hepburn. (In vain, Mr. Lerner hoped to recruit Miss Hepburn for the movie. Miss Caron, under contract to MGM since co-starring with Gene Kelly in “An American in Paris,” played Gigi in a London production of the Hepburn vehicle.)
To clear the decks for his own project, Mr. Freed was obliged to indemnify Anita Loos, author of the play, and partners who had a musical version of their own in the works. It turned out that Colette’s widower had sold both interested parties the rights.
The commentary track for the new DVD edition is entrusted to an estimable scholar, Janine Basinger of Wesleyan University, a sincere enthusiast but far from an authority on this particular subject. There are fitful interjections from Miss Caron, but she and Miss Basinger never speak to each other.
Despite its numerous awards, “Gigi” had no cast members in the Oscar finals. The Academy board voted a career award to Maurice Chevalier, a commendable gesture on several counts. I’ve always felt that the Oscar annals would look shinier if “Gigi” had made a clean sweep of the acting awards too: Miss Caron, Mr. Jourdan, Mr. Chevalier and Isabel Jeans, superlative as Gigi’s bossy Aunt Alicia.
TITLE: “Gigi”
RATING: No MPAA Rating (released in 1958, a decade before the advent of the film rating system; occasional innuendo and sexual candor)
CREDITS: Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Produced by Arthur Freed. Screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, based on the novella by Colette. Songs by Mr. Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Musical supervision by Andre Previn.
RUNNING TIME: 116 minutes, plus supplementary material and the 1948 French version, which runs 83 minutes
DVD EDITION: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
WEB SITE: www.warnervideo.com
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