Vincente Minnelli (1958)

One of the most assured and enjoyable of the big Hollywood musicals in the quarter century following the end of the Second World War, it’s also one of the few written for the screen rather than adapted from a stage success.  Perhaps a main reason why Gigi is so pleasurable – and different from some other ‘classic’ musicals of the period – is that, although the production is opulent, it doesn’t feel big or try to impress through gargantuan qualities.  Lerner and Loewe’s lovely, varied songs and Minnelli’s direction respect and protect the scale of the original material, Colette’s novella of 1944 (written when she was in her early seventies).   The stiff, prettily composed opening sequence in the Bois de Boulogne gives the sense of the pages of a storybook coming to life but the story that follows is a striking blend of romantic and sharp social comedy.   And Minnelli avoids the temptation of ‘opening out’ the story into irrelevant locations in order to prove its cinematic credentials:  for much of the time he’s happy to keep the action in the apartment – it has walls and furnishings of a startlingly bright red – where Gigi (Leslie Caron) lives with her grandmother Mamita (Hermione Gingold).   Minnelli opens out when there’s a dramatic benefit in doing so – especially during the singing of the title song, by Gaston Lachaille (Louis Jourdan), and in the reprise of locations contained in that sequence, when the emotional weather has shifted later in the story.

Leslie Caron is great as Gigi, the courtesan-in-training who charms the wealthy playboy Gaston out of cynicism and into true love.  Caron looks remarkably younger than the rather hefty heroine of An American in Paris she played seven years earlier.  She’s magically believable as a gamine teenager:  there’s no strain whatsoever in her acting young or in Gigi’s becoming a woman, thanks to Caron’s unobtrusive technical skill and the way she sustains a complete consistency of spirit.   She’s often very funny; she always shows you Gigi’s darting intelligence.  It’s a tribute to Caron that, when Gigi first appears in ‘grown-up’ gowns, the effect is lovely (she looks beautiful), disappointing (she seems denatured) and touching (she appears suddenly vulnerable).  Louis Jourdan partners her perfectly – there’s beautiful chemistry between them, especially in comic sequences like the lead-in to ‘The Night They Invented Champagne’.  Jourdan is so subtly accomplished:  he’s very convincing as a man with a sensually jaded palate and with a mixture of both natural and professional charm.  I guess Rex Harrison had already pioneered the technique of speak-singing in the original stage production of My Fair Lady but there’s a freshness and wit in Jourdan’s delivery of ’She Is Not Thinking Of Me’ and a natural dramatic momentum in his performance of ‘Gigi’ that are infinitely more appealing than anything in Harrison’s screen portrait of Professor Higgins.

Maurice Chevalier is Honoré Lachaille, Gaston’s uncle and moral mentor and the story’s narrator.  He has three main numbers; all of them – whether you like Chevalier or not – have become classics:   ‘Thanks Heaven For Little Girls’, ‘I Remember It Well’ and ‘I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore’ (memorably parodied by Stanley Baxter in one of his TV specials in the 1970s as ‘I’m Glad I’m Not Alive Anymore’).  Chevalier is an exceptionally self-satisfied performer; perhaps it’s Honoré’s getting things wrong that makes his ‘I Remember It Well’ duet with the witty Hermione Gingold by far the most enjoyable of the three numbers.  It’s a pity the camera is on Chevalier’s smug mug, rather than Gingold’s, when she answers his question, ‘Am I getting old?’, with:

‘Oh, no, not you

How strong you were

How young and gay

A prince of love

In every way’

– but never mind.

Gigi’s lessons in society manners from her Aunt Alicia – how to eat ortolan, how to recognise gemstones – are alarmingly funny.  Isabel Jeans is an amusingly emphatic instructress and Leslie Caron is marvellous at being intimidated and bored at the same time.  The film won all nine Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including Best Picture and Best Director (as well as an honorary Oscar in the same year for Maurice Chevalier).

30 December 2009