silly movie
ok, it is grand, but that is all. what the movie try to tell us, a good-for-nothing man fall in love with a little girl? will they live happily after that, i doubt that.
sharebesides, it is far worse than minnelli's other musicals(meet me in st. louis ), none of the songs are melodious, i don't know why it won an oscar.
shareNo, it has depths and subtleties that raise it above silly eye candy.
Each of the older characters embody aspects of sexual politics that are almost timeless. Women are either socially respectable wives or un-respectable playthings. Wives, especially as they age, are made boring to their husbands by the very respectability that qualifies them to be worthy of marriage. Mistresses are toys that come with wealth and power, their value lies in their sexual youth and attractiveness, and their willingness to centre their lives on being pleasing to men. In neither case do they have any intrinsic human or social worth as individuals, only in how useful or appealing they are to men. Fin de siecle Paris demonstrates this situation very blatantly (to the point of celebrating it), but it has been common in most human cultures in one form or another, probably since we stopped hunter gathering. It's not for nothing prostitution is known as the oldest profession.
What happens in Gigi is that a man with all the advantages of wealth, youth, power and looks, a man fitted from birth almost to enjoy the 'playboy' lifestyle men are still taught to aspire to (ask Hugh Heffner), says 'this is not enough'. When he (inadvertantly) wanders into a relationship based on friendship and affection with this girl, he finds he wants that to be the basis of the way he relates to women - not because he has some weird feminist ideals or awakening, but because HE PREFERS SOMEONE HE CAN LIKE AND RESPECT. She's more interesting.
He won't treat her as a disposable plaything because he GENUINELY has come to care for her as a person. Given her station in life (illegitimate trainee tart) and his (debonaire, wealthy pillar of society), marriage - an 'honour' supposedly reserved for social equals - is the best way he can express his respect for her. He's cocking a snook both at 'respectable' notions of marriage and accepted patterns of male sexual gratification by refusing to exploit her.
Will he be ogling nubile young coquettes in a few years time, like other bored husbands? If you're a cynic, I suppose the answer is 'very probably'. But nothing in the film suggests that - they are 'chums'. As well as sexual attraction their 'partnership' is based on mutual affection, laughter and comradeship, qualities that stand as good a chance of enduring as any. The empty marriages and vapid liasons all around them are not.
And if all that still sounds like the stuff of 'silly' chick-flick fare, and not worth a 3 hour film, then maybe that's a sad reflection on how engrossing and relevant we girls still find movies about being taken seriously by men are, and how charmed we are to watch a man do it.
Well, shipperly-groom, that is certainly a reasoned critique. I have to go with the others though; I watched it On Demand, and found myself zipping through it looking for a fun song. The Chevalier/Gingold "I Remember It Well" was charming if you can get past the only thing that Honore can remember is that he was strong and virile. Nothing else about a woman he said he wanted to marry can be remembered correctly. It must have seemed so sophisticated back then, when a lot of people did not appreciate or know of turn-of-the-century Paree. They turned beauteous surroundings into a very long film without much substance. I would have voted for "The Defiant Ones" or "Auntie Mame" as Best Picture before this one.
shareI agree with shipperly-groom's review of "Gigi". This light-hearted, musical treatment of the questions of marriage and companionship teaches some important lessons.
Even today, 48 years later, when we are supposedly so enlightened about women's issues, teenage girls are being made to think they have to do everything men want them to do sexually, because they still want the same things girls of all ages have wanted--to be loved. I think the way Gigi stood up to them all and expressed what she really thought and wanted was a good example for many women today.
I got this movie to show to my teenage daughters, for that very reason.
It's interesting that in the pro-"feminist" reviews here, the men take the rap, yet no question is raised about the self-centeredness of girls/women who want to BE loved, but make no mention of GIVING love. Is the excuse for that the claim that all that men do is take, therefore that is what women should do?
Beyond the politically correct: men are required -- by both society and women --to pay for sex. (Even while both -- wink, wink -- pretend to be outraged by that reality.) It is beyond ironic that the sympathy goes to the woman, even though the man pays in exchange for sex, while she gets the cash and sex as well.
Will we ever mature beyond the self-serving notion that "sexism" is a one-way street to being honest about the fact that it is a two-way street? Will we ever mature beyond the self-serving sexist notion that all men are the same, thus all men want "only one thing" instead of more than that? If so, women will have to move beyond their unevaluated assumption that the way to come on to a man is to offer: sex. Is that all there is?
I may misunderstand your post, but I think that the mutual friendship between Gigi and Gaston in the story is the answer to that problem.
share
Seximsm is a one-way street if women have no power and will starve unless they give their bodies for sexual services. No one has said or is saying that "men only want one thing" -- that's coming only from you.
.