Gigi 1958

The Film:

Some weird twisted part of me has sort of been looking forward to this one. Not the two hours I'm going to be spending watching the thing, but the chance I've got to channel my best Hedda and Louella in ripping the thing to bits on this blog.

In case it isn't already obvious - I really, really hate this film with a passion. It's considered by many to be one of the best examples of a genre of film that I generally cite to be one of my favourites - the lavish Hollywood musical. However, this thing is just hideous.

I was probably about twelve or thirteen when I first watched it properly and it left me cold and confused - and ultimately bored. I've seen it several times since, generally by accident, but also with a morbid curiosity as to why I dislike it so much. The last time I watched it was about five or six years ago and I was suddenly and violently physically sick halfway through. It was more likely to have been a bug or something I'd eaten than an actual response to the film - but the experience has stuck with me nevertheless. I suppose at least this means it can't be quite as bad this time......

The Ceremony:

No commercials - how times have changed!

On April 6th 1959, the Awards were presented in a ceremony that followed a very similar format to the previous year - same place, same time, same idea of multiple presenters (including Bob Hope!).

David Niven was one of the presenters, and he also won Best Actor that night - the only presenter to date to win an award on the same night.

The only other point of note I can find is that the producers of the show started panicking that it was running over time (an increasing concern once the whole thing started to be broadcast live on TV) and they kept cutting things out as the show progressed. This left it running 20 minutes short and Jerry Lewis stepped in to try and fill as much time as he could (that must have been painful!) until they eventually cut to a re-run of some sport show.

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Burl, Susan and David - the splendid Ms Hiller was
appearing on the West End stage at the time!

Gigi took the most awards in one year ever (up to that point) so there wasn't a great deal else left to go around. However, it didn't even get any nominations in the Acting categories, and they were split between three different films.

David Niven and Wendy Hiller took Actor and Supporting Actress for Separate Tables, Susan Hayward won for I Want To Live! (playing a woman on death row - it looks interesting, I need to try and find it...) and Burl Ives won for The Big Country.

The Best Live Action Short Film this year is one I remember from trips to see Disney films in the 70s. Half an hour of impressive shots of the Grand Canyon with great music accompanying it. It's all there on Youtube and worth watching again!

Best Song:

One of the rare occasions where Best Song comes from Best Picture. Although there's nothing "best" about this one - it's not even the best song in the film (and none of them are really any good). But Louis Jourdan is giving it his best in this clip:

From this year onwards there is a new phenomenon that I feel I should make mention of, that will crop up from now on whenever a Musical takes Best Picture! At least one unsung singing hero makes an appearance (though not visually) in all the musical winners of the 60s. And there's one in Gigi that needs a mention. Maurice and Louis did their own songs (as above) but Minnelli wasn't convinced enough by Leslie Caron - so she is dubbed pretty much throughout by one of the dubbing greats, Betty Wand. She'll be back again in a couple of years, duetting with the ultimate dubbing superstar Marni Nixon. But, for now, to redress the balance a bit, here she is!


What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Any excuse for pouty Newman in his underwear!

Well, we could have been watching pretty much anything else that had been released in 1958 and I would have been much happier. Even if we just stick to big musicals we could have had South Pacific!

Out of the other Best Picture nominees (Separate Tables, Auntie Mame, The Defiant Ones and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof) my vote goes to Cat On A Hot Tin Roof - and not just because it features a half-undressed Paul Newman throughout. It's a really good film that went home empty-handed on the night. (To be fair, I've only seen one of the other three - Separate Tables - but it's unlikely that any of them are worse than Gigi!)

Nine Oscars?!? How!?!

Taking all the films of 1958 into consideration, we end up with another massive Oscar snub. The film that most often steals number one from Citizen Kane in critics all time lists got two technical nominations and nothing else. Despite the fact that pretty much everyone who has reviewed it since considers Vertigo to be an absolute classic. Yet another example of the Academy really not getting what Hitchcock was all about (even though the critics and the public generally did!)

Our Verdict:

Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored. Quite.

However much I loathe and abhor this monstrosity of a film, I knew the chances were very high that Andy would like it even less than I do. I have a much higher tolerance level for flashy musicals than he does. Therefore I went into this viewing with the slight hope (or dread?) that I might end up defending it in some way or that I may finally get what everyone got in 1958.

A great still from a great scene - a great rarity in this film!

That only happened in a very slight way. Although it still surprised me. Since I was about fourteen or fifteen I'd sort of presumed that I didn't like Leslie Caron and I'd based that presumption on this film. She was also (to teenaged me) a bit irritating with a plastic smile in American in Paris, far too perky in Lili and absolutely not what I had imagined when reading Daddy Long Legs. However, I take that all back. Leslie Caron is very good in Gigi. Especially in the first half of the film when she's the innocent child version of Gigi. And I really like the scenes with her Aunt. The only ridiculous thing about her performance is that she doesn't get to dance. Leslie Caron wasn't a great singer, so they dubbed her, but she was a trained dancer who had already built her career on this talent. However, there is no dancing going on in Gigi (another thing that is wrong with the film, imho). Considering that she's only really there to sound French and look pretty, she does a really good job of making her role a fair bit more than that.

And there you go. That's everything good I have to say about this film. (That and the fact that there was no projectile vomiting this time!) The rest of it is AWFUL. And I cannot even contemplate a situation where I will ever change my mind on this. It is AWFUL. I am a huge, huge fan of classic Hollywood Musicals, including several Minnelli films (Meet Me In St Louis and The Band Wagon are both brilliant!). But this one is very very bad indeed.....

Thank heavens.....that this sort of thing doesn't win Oscars any more!

Firstly, the music itself is really mediocre. There are three songs that people tend to actually remember - Thank Heavens, I Remember it Well and The Night they Invented Champagne. All of them are pretty throwaway compared to anything in Loewe and Lerner's next great triumph, My Fair Lady. And the title song that won the Oscar is a load of nothing.

Secondly, the script is really unevenly paced and even more unevenly acted. It spends ages on mundane things and then rushes the end so that you could yawn and miss the whole point (as Andy did). I'm not really complaining that the ending comes to soon (it is, after all, a mercifully short film) but it just doesn't hang together very well. People travel around a lot - up and down stairs, across ballrooms and parks, running across bridges and around fountains - but they don't really do very much when they get there.

I still reckon the ortolans got the best
deal out of this film!

And thirdly - and most concerningly - for the whole thing to be set up as a delightful love story and a lavish romance and a great family-friendly movie is at the very least weird and, when you really think about it, downright distasteful. This is a story about a 30something promiscuous playboy, being encouraged by his equally promiscuous 60something uncle in his selfish exploits with women (even as far as congratulating him for causing an attempted suicide) - all of which ultimately draws him towards a teenager who is being groomed by her family to be a courtesan (basically a 19thC version of a high- class prostitute). And we're meant to find it all romantic and charming and life-affirming. Nope, sorry. Kander and Ebb could have done something interesting with this story (with some help from Bob Fosse), but it would never have been given a U rating!

I do wonder if the reason they got away with all this was because they were French - and there was (possibly still is, to some extent) a strange fetishisation in America of all things French, particularly if they are Parisian, and fancy, and old fashioned - all things which Gigi is. If the same basic story had been set in the Bronx or Hoboken (like two of the better winners of the decade had been) it would have either been hard and gritty or totally unbelievable. But certainly not a lavish family musical.

Anyway, in conclusion, I am not now, and never have been, exaggerating this point at all. I REALLY don't like this film. It is AWFUL. Don't watch it, it's really not worth putting yourself through it. I've seen it about half a dozen times now and I have no intention of ever putting myself through that ever again!