Gigi

UPC: 883929020447

Studio: Warner Home Video

MPAA Rating: G   Contains:[Adult Situations, Suitable for Children]

Summary: Leslie Caron plays Gigi, a young girl raised by two veteran Parisian courtesans (Hermione Gingold and Isabel Jeans) to be the mistress of wealthy young Gaston (Louis Jourdan). When Gaston falls in love with Gigi and asks her to be his wife, Jeans is appalled: never has anyone in their family ever stooped to anything so bourgeois as marriage! Weaving in and out of the story is Maurice Chevalier as an aging boulevardier who, years earlier, had been in love with Gingold's character. Chevalier gets most of the best Lerner & Loewe tunes, including Thank Heaven for Little Girls, I'm Glad I'm Not Young Any More, and his matchless duet with Gingold, I Remember it Well. Caron's best number (dubbed by Betty Wand) is The Night They Invented Champagne while Jourdan gets the honor of introducing the title song. Filmed on location in Paris, Gigi won several Oscars, including Best Picture; it also represented the successful American movie comeback of Chevalier, who thanks to this film was "forgiven" for his reputed collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Category: Musical

Awards: Best British Film – British Academy of Film and Television Arts U.S. National Film Registry – Library of Congress Best Picture - Musical – null Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or – null Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or – null Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical – null Best Supporting Actress – null Best Director – null Best Adapted Screenplay – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Art Direction – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Art Direction – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Art Direction – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Art Direction – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Color Cinematography – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Costume Design – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Director – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Editing – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Picture – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Musical Score – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Song – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Song – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Picture – National Board of Review Best Director – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Moti – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Picture - Musical – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Director – Directors Guild of America

Features: Commentary by historian Jeanine Basinger with Leslie Caron
Thank heaven! the making of Gigi - sparking new documentary about the trubulent creation of a musical classic featuring Leslie Caron and Vincente Minnelli
New digial transfer form restored picture and audio elements, including soundtrack rematered in Dolby Digital 5.1 1949 nonmusical first screen version of Gigi, starring Daniele Delorme in the title role and directed by Jacqueline Audry
Vintage short The Million Dollar Nickel
Classic cinemascope
Cartoon the Vanishing Duck
Theatrical trailer

Gigi

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 03/31/2009

Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 2.40:1

Audio: DTHD null, DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1, DD1 Dolby Digital Mono

Runtime: 115 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French,Spanish,German

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Bruce Eder

Vincente Minnelli's Gigi was arguably the last great movie of the director's career and the last great musical made at MGM. It was an improbable hit in its time, and it is often denigrated as a poor relation of My Fair Lady, which, like Gigi, was the work of composer-screenwriters Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. In 1958, it had been five years since Minnelli's last successful musical The Band Wagon, and the genre was believed to be running out of steam at the box office. This project, based on a Colette story about a young courtesan matched up with a wealthy man, seemed unlikely material in the supposedly staid 1950s. But Lerner and Loewe's script downplayed the morally equivocal nature of the adults and the title character (without totally losing it) and wrapped the story around a score that drew on the richest melodic influences of My Fair Lady, which was just going into previews at the time. Gigi even inherited one song dropped from the stage version of My Fair Lady, and the score gave it the feel of a 19th century operetta, with the sweeping, melodic elegance of the Viennese tradition and the sauciness of its Parisian counterpart. It was Minnelli's enviable task to make all of this look beautiful, shooting partly in Paris (a privilege he'd been denied on An American In Paris) with a dream cast. The result was a movie that pleased audiences; got away with presenting a tale of prostitution to a general audience in a decade when the screen supposedly didn't even acknowledge the existence of moral terpitude, much less allow its heroes and heroines to have engaged in it (see Detective Story); and introduced a brace of superb songs that still play to audiences. Gigi was the last great score and script that Minnelli ever got to work with, and it is the last MGM musical that is essential viewing even for non-fans of Minnelli and the movie musical. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Marilyn Sims  Actor 
Jack Trevan  Actor 
Edwin Jerome  Actor 
Dorothy Neumann  Actor 
Monique Van Vooren  Actor 
Lydia Stevens  Actor 
Richard Bean  Actor 
Pat Sheahan  Actor 
Arthur Freed  Producer 
Alan Jay Lerner  Composer (Music Score) 
Alan Jay Lerner  Screenwriter 
Frederick Loewe  Composer (Music Score) 
Frederick Loewe  Screenwriter 
Vincente Minnelli  Director 
Andre Previn  Composer (Music Score) 
Leslie Caron  Actor 
Maurice Chevalier  Actor 
Louis Jourdan  Actor 
Hermione Gingold  Actor 
Eva Gabor  Actor 
Isabel Jeans  Actor 
Jacques Bergerac  Actor 
John Abbott  Actor 

Country: USA