In 1956 Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady was a memorable hit on Broadway and for a while all the studios in Hollywood struggled to get the rights for the film version. Two years later, having lost the rights to Jack Warner, MGM hired Lerner and Loewe to work on a similar story, trying to repeat that incredible success. Their bet was won: Gigi did well and got 9 Oscars, including Best Picture, over Hitchcock's Vertigo (!) Now it is a bit forgotten - since 1964 it has been overshadowed by Fair Lady and, I must say, with some good reasons. The plot, if similar, is not as interesting as Fair Lady's, and it deals with somewhat "scandalous" matters (Gigi being trained by her aunt to be a first class hooker) in a very veiled, prudish way, so that it's not always easy to understand what's going on. A.J.Lerner's script, which follows very closely the original play by Colette, has none of the wit or the cleverness of the one he wrote for Fair Lady, closely following Shaw. As for the actors, Leslie Caron, whose singing was dubbed by Betty Wand, is a nice little thing, but on the whole, she's not more than the poor man's Audrey, and Louis Jourdan as the male lead can't hold a candle to Harrison. Gigi is still a pleasant film, though. Maurice Chevalier's performance is for sure one of its high points, even if he now looks a bit creepy singing "Thank heaven for little girls". Its glorious Technicolor is still gorgeous to look at and Cecil Beaton's costumes are wonderful. It has some very nice songs too, especially the bittersweet, nostalgic "I remember it well", sung by Gingold and Chevalier in one of the best scene of the movie. Other nice songs are "Say a Prayer for Me Tonight" -originally written to be sung by Eliza in My Fair Lady and "The Night They Invented Champagne", a kind of French "Rain in Spain". On the whole, a light, graceful film - 7/10 in my book.
Review of Gigi
