Adapted from the novella Gigi by Colette
Gigi is being trained by her grandmother and great-aunt to become a courtesan. She is friends with a notorious playboy named Gaston who is falling in love with her. Though Gigi likes Gaston very much, she's not convinced that she wants to become his mistress.
As I mentioned seven years ago when I blogged about this movie before, I find this story incredibly disturbing. I particularly objected to the character of Gaston's uncle, who sings, "Thank heaven for little girls, for little girls are more objectified by old men every day," or something like that. So I was not unhappy that this character does not appear in the novella at all. It's briefly mentioned that Gigi's grandmother had a thing with one of Gaston's older relatives, and I guess Alan Jay Lerner decided to run with that. I do enjoy the song between the uncle and the grandmother, but otherwise, I could have done without that addition. It almost felt like Lerner didn't think there were enough male characters in the original story, so he needed to add a creepy old guy. Either that or he just wanted to make the movie more disturbing than the book.
However, to be fair there are some ways in which the original story is more disturbing than the film. I guess you can tell that Gigi is supposed to be pretty young in the movie, but I don't think they ever say her exact age. Leslie Caron was in her late 20s when she played her, so the age difference between her and Gaston is not nearly as striking as in the original story, in which she's 15 and he's in his early 30s. Because of this, and its lack of songs, I feel like it's more readily apparent that the book is supposed to be disturbing. The movie probably is, too, but it almost feels like it's trying to brush over the darker themes with lighthearted musical numbers, which doesn't really work for me. Maybe that's the point, but I don't really like it.
Apart from the songs, the added uncle, and the ambiguity of Gigi's age, the movie is actually surprisingly similar to the book. Most of the novella is included in the film, apart from a few of the more raunchy lines of dialogue that Hollywood still wasn't ready for yet. Of course, the novella is not very long, so several scenes were added for the movie. When the original story begins, Gaston has just split up with his latest girlfriend, whereas that doesn't happen until around the middle of the film. Seeing this play out instead of just hearing about it after the fact definitely adds to the story, so I think that was a wise change. The book ends much more quickly than the movie, pretty much going straight from "I'd rather be miserable with you than without you" to Gaston's proposal. The movie adds this whole thing where they go out together and he takes her back and she gets all upset, and then he proposes, and it's like, why do you want to marry him? He just treated you terribly! So that addition was kind of unnecessary. But on the whole, as far as adaptations go, this one actually isn't that bad. I just still don't think this movie deserved nine Oscars. Sorry.
Next up: Room at the Top, based on the novel by John Braine, for which Simone Signoret won Best Actress, and about which I wrote a little over two years ago, "I will not be re-visiting this movie any time soon." Great. Why am I doing this again?
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