Gigi **** (1958, Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold) – Classic Movie Review 2,178

The 1958 musical film Gigi, with exactly the right stars in Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold, was a huge hit and a sensation at the Oscars, winning all nine of its nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Director Vincente Minnelli’s 1958 American musical film Gigi, with exactly the right stars in Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold, was a huge hit and a surprise sensation at the Academy Awards, winning all nine of its nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner is based on the 1944 novella by Colette and the play version by Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).

It is the last great MGM musical and the final triumph of producer Arthur Freed’s MGM Freed Unit.

The songs have lyrics by Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, arranged and conducted by André Previn. The costumes are designed by Cecil Beaton, with the all-important hats by Madame Paulette. The film is shot by Joseph Ruttenberg in MGM’s Eastmancolor process Metrocolor. 

In 1900 Paris, a rich lady Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans) teaches her teenage niece Gigi (Caron) the ways of the courtesan to be the mistress of the handsome and dashing Gaston (Jourdan). For a while the couple enjoy a platonic friendship, but the romantically inclined, tomboyish girl falls for him and decides to get married to him instead.

Visual stylists Minnelli and Cecil Beaton (the set and costume designer) adorn this nine-Oscar winning musical with a fussy, slightly musty elegance and an overdose of lavish, intricately woven detail.

But Caron is ideal as Colette’s feisty young heroine, Jourdan is impeccable in his most famous role as the debonair charmer rich playboy Gaston, while of the older generation, both Gingold as Gigi’ s grandmother and Chevalier as Jourdan’s father just ooze charisma as they rekindle their old love.

The catchy evergreen Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner songs include the enduring classics ‘Gigi’, ‘I Remember it Well’, ‘The Night they Invented Champagne’ and ‘Thank Heaven for Little Girls’, all providing lots of pleasure.

Despite the movie’s staid conservatism and over-production, this last big MGM musical of the Fifties, made when they had already gone out of fashion, is still utterly delightful.

Gigi won a record-breaking nine Oscars at the 1959 ceremony, but the following year Ben-Hur broke that record with 11 Oscars.

The nine Oscars were for: Best Motion Picture (producer Arthur Freed), Best Director (Vincente Minnelli), Best Cinematography – Color (Joseph Ruttenberg), Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium (Alan Jay Lerner), Best Art Direction (Art Direction: William A. Horning and E. Preston Ames; Set Decoration: Henry Grace and F. Keogh Gleason), Best Costume Design (Cecil Beaton), Best Scoring of a Musical Picture (André Previn), Best Film Editing (Adrienne Fazan), Best Song (‘Gigi’, Music by Frederick Loewe; Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner), plus an honorary lifetime award for Chevalier.

None of the performers was Oscar nominated. At the Golden Globes, Caron, Jordan and Chevalier were nominated, and Hermione Gingold won Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture, while Vincente Minnelli won Best Director.

At the Grammy Awards, André Previn won for Best Sound Track Album, Dramatic Picture Score or Original Cast.

Gigi has also in the cast Eva Gabor, John Abbott, Monique Van Vooren, Lydia Stevens, Edwin Jerome, Dorothy Neumann, Marilyn Sims, Richard Bean and Pat Sheahan.

Leslie Caron’s singing voice is dubbed by American ghost singer Betty Wand, though Caron recorded the songs and filmed mainly miming to her own tracks. A brief clip of Caron’s voice is heard on the DVD extras.

It was astoundingly popular. On a budget of $3.3 million, it took $13.2 million at the box office.

Release date: May 15, 1958.

Running time: 115 minutes.

Staid and stuffy it might seem now, but it was provocative material for a film musical in the Fifties. Arthur Freed proposed turning Colette’s novella into a musical to Alan Jay Lerner during the Philadelphia try-out of My Fair Lady in 1956. But, two years later, Freed was still battling the Hays Code to bring the story of a courtesan-in-training to the screen. 

Lerner wrote the part of Honoré Lachaille for Chevalier. Freed asked Lerner to meet Audrey Hepburn in Paris, but she declined the role of Gigi. They flew to London, where Leslie Caron was living and had recently starred in an unsuccessful stage production of Gigi. They offered her the star role in the film and she accepted.

It follows the 1949 French comedy film Gigi, directed by Jacqueline Audry and starring Danièle Delorme, Gaby Morlay, Jean Tissier and Yvonne de Bray.

Louis Jourdan

Louis Jourdan, the debonair French leading man who was brought to Hollywood by producer David O Selznick in 1947 to appear in Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case, died on February 14 2015, aged 93. He starred as the smooth villain Khan in the James Bond movie Octopussy.

Leslie Caron (born 1 July 1931)

French and American actress and dancer Leslie Caron (born 1 July 1931) is the winner of a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, plus nominations for two Academy Awards for Lili (1953) and The L-Shaped Room (1962).

Leslie Caron celebrated her 95th birthday on 1 July 2026.

The cast

The cast are Leslie Caron as Gilberte ‘Gigi’, Maurice Chevalier as Honoré Lachaille, Louis Jourdan as Gaston Lachaille, Hermione Gingold as Madame Alvarez (‘Mamita’), Eva Gabor as Liane d’Exelmans, Jacques Bergerac as Sandomir, Isabel Jeans as Aunt Alicia, John Abbott as Manuel, Marie-Hélène Arnaud as a Maxim’s girl, Monique Van Vooren, Lydia Stevens, Edwin Jerome, Dorothy Neumann, Marilyn Sims, Richard Bean and Pat Sheahan..

© Derek Winnert 2015 – Classic Movie Review 2,178

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