Vincente Minnelli | 111 mins | TV (HD) | PG / G
Gigi is a film about largely horrid people doing morally dubious things. But of course it’s a musical from the ’50s, so it all has a veneer of loveliness and respectability.
It begins with an elder gentleman singing Thank Heaven for Little Girls; not because, say, they bring a youthful joy to old age, but because they’re a constant source of new young ladies for him to have affairs with — and not chaste, romantic affairs either. Actor Maurice Chevalier may have a twinkle in his eye and a conspiratorial tone with the audience, speaking directly to camera, but he’s playing a dirty old man really. Most of the film’s characters share his moral compass.
There are two exceptions, more or less. Gigi herself (Leslie Caron) is one, an innocent teen who isn’t as wise as her years, despite her grandmother (Hermione Gingold) and great aunt (Isabel Jeans) schooling her in preparation to be, essentially, a serial mistress. If one were to be unkind, you might say courtesan — the majority of women in the film are or were in the business of going out with men for money, status, etc; one man at a time (mostly), but on a serial basis. Gigi isn’t a simpering romantic, though, she just wants to have fun, and in her delightfully clumsy way can’t cope with her great aunt’s rules and restrictions.
The other decent character is Gaston (Louis Jourdan), although it takes him some time to get there. He’s super-rich, bored with everything, egged on and tutored in ‘relationships’ by the aforementioned dirty old man. Gaston would rather spend his time playing cards or larking about with Gigi; they may be related, I’m not sure. I hope not, because (spoilers!) 
eventually Gaston realises he loves Gigi and her training is stepped up so she can become his latest conquest. I won’t go into the details of the ending, but their part of the story ends well.
It doesn’t for the others. Not that it ends badly, but no one else changes their ways, despite the occasional hint they might. This is probably a good thing — it wouldn’t be particularly realistic if everyone reformed to the ways of Goodness and Honour. And there’s nothing wrong with a musical that tackles subjects outside the expected soppy romanticism — in fairness, many stage musicals are more risque, in part if not whole, but it gets removed for the film versions — and Gigi seems no exception, because while many of these activities and attitudes are quite amoral, it’s all given a lovely sheen. I’d excuse anyone who thought Gigi and Gaston were engaged when she agrees to be his whore (in fact — spoilers! — it’s only later he sees the error of his ways and proposes).
Part of the tonal clash — between the characters’ behaviour and the film’s ’50s niceness — comes in the musical numbers, most of which are very funny. Thank Heaven for Little Girls may be sullied, but It’s a Bore, The Parisians, The Night They Invented Champagne, and particularly I Remember It Well, are all very enjoyable with wonderful lyrics. 
I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore is also a nice change of pace, celebrating old age for a change.
The film also looks the part, exquisitely detailed sets and costumes supported by genuine Paris locations, all shot vibrantly. It leaps off the screen, especially in HD — in particular, the home of Gigi’s grandmother, which must be the reddest room ever seen.
Gigi scored a then-record-breaking nine Oscars in 1959 (only to be beaten the next year), including many I’m certain it deserved — partly because I’ve not even heard of most of the films it was up against, but also because it is an entertaining musical, just one with, I would say, uncertain morals. Whether this makes a welcome change for the genre or is an unpleasant undermining of it is surely down to each viewer’s preference.
“Oh dear,” is surely the initial reaction to Brigadoon. The Scottish accents are appalling, the costumes and setting gratingly twee, the Highlands recreated entirely on a soundstage. I wonder if many Americans visited Scotland in the wake of this film expecting to find such things? If they did, I imagine they were sorely disappointed.
I think it’s fair to say this isn’t the greatest of musicals (though I know some might disagree). The poor realisation of Scotland takes some getting used to — and remains either irritating or amusing, depending on your mileage for such things — and generally there’s a dearth of particularly memorable songs or dances. But it’s not bad either, once things get underway.
Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour return for the fifth film in the Road to… series.
I’ve awarded to each belies how much I enjoyed them, with Morocco in particular worth a fourth. But I think it’s also fair to say these films are a rather dated style of entertainment. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — as noted, I still think they’re fun, and I’m sure many others do and would too — but plenty of modern viewers would find them (to be polite) too quaint.
I don’t imagine Bride & Prejudice is going to convert many people who aren’t already predisposed to liking it in some way. That’s not to say it’s not good or doesn’t have potential crossover appeal, but it still has a whole list of things that will put certain viewers off.
not to mention the numerous adaptations predating either of those, but Bride brings plenty that’s vastly different to the table. It converts the novel very accurately (as best I can tell, having only seen screen versions), retaining both the characterisation and the majority of the plot in a similar sequence of events.
Little of the plot requires such modification, perhaps thanks to the culture it’s been grafted onto — the predominance of arranged marriages wouldn’t really work in a ’00s British setting — and those bits which are changed are relatively minor. Lydia (here, Lakhi) runs off with Wickham for an afternoon at the London Eye, rather than eloping; Georgiana (here, the slightly more modern Georgina) was impregnated at 16, less legally complicated than the novel’s 15.
Readers may remember that I opened my 
Mac and Kutcher play the roles they always play— No, actually, in fairness, I can’t say that: I think I’ve only seen Mac in the 
It’s as recognisable from TV sitcoms — 
In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a white girl falls in love with a black man and brings him home to meet the parents. You can almost imagine this premise still being launched today, as one of those dreadful ‘comedies’ Hollywood pumps out every year, in which the parents are outrageous racists — played by some ageing stars who should really know better — and one of the young couple is a bit accident-prone and played by someone like Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler.
It could easily have been a simplistic message movie — these people are liberal, these people are racist, etc — but instead there’s complexity at every turn. There’s the liberal white parents who never expected to find themselves in this situation, and suddenly are struggling with their own ideologies; or the black characters, who you might think would be eager to move ‘up in the world’ but actually react even worse to the idea; or the Catholic priest being one of the few characters unwaveringly in favour of the union. And even then, these characters could just become ciphers for the arguments and debates; but they’re not, they’re characters, having believable reactions, and from this comes the debate.
Before I come to write a review, I tend to check out the sort of scores it’s received at a few different sites. This isn’t to help form my opinion, but actually just a side effect of the fact I go to places to rate the films myself. What one usually encounters is some degree of discrepancy, be it as little as half a mark or as large as several. As you may have guessed, Ghost Town is going to prove the exception: on 
The high-concept at the film’s centre — that Ricky Gervais sees dead people and doesn’t want to — is neat enough. It largely sticks to its rules, it manages a few moments of humour, it doesn’t get too repetitive, it often plays the most obvious card (someone thinks Ricky’s talking to them when he’s actually talking to a ghost! Oh, my sides.) And Gervais, as you’re no doubt aware, plays himself. He doesn’t do characters but variations on a theme, and while this means he’ll never be a good actor per se, he can fulfil such characters very competently.
Ivanhoe is the kind of film they don’t often make any more, a pure swashbuckling romp. And when they do make them they tend to muck it up with over-complicated mythology-obsessed sequels — yes 
Though the final duel that ultimately follows can’t quite live up to this in terms of sheer scale and excitement, it impressively holds its own as a climactic action sequence.
Public Enemies came out nearly a year ago now, and I remember two things about its release: firstly, that the first review I saw was Empire’s, which 
What it brings here is an unusual quality. It’s clearly fiction, of course, albeit fiction based on fact, and there are still plenty of extravagant angles and editing so that you’re never in danger of thinking Mann is trying to pass this off as a documentary. But couple the raw cinematography with a meticulous attention to period detail, with a sound mix that is consciously rough and real, and you get a sense that this is how it was — it’s not a glossified movie version, it’s a How It Was one. Public Enemies is to the old gangster film as 
The characters do and don’t lack depth. The relationship between Dillinger and Billie is a significant part of the film, receiving roughly equal attention to Dillinger’s criminal deeds — it’s his final words to her that close the film, not his death. Christian Bales’ G-man, Melvin Purvis, on the other hand, is less developed, but to say he lacks any character is to do Bale’s performance a disservice. Behind Purvis’ blunt dialogue and stolid manner, and in slight gaps and lapses around it, one gets a sense of the true man and his real thoughts. The postscript — that he resigned from the FBI a year later and ultimately took his own life — reinforces and confirms the subtleties Bale injects into the performance.
Mann does his best, cutting around Dillinger in the movie theatre, the bizarrely-apt film he’s watching (this isn’t dramatic licence — Dillinger really saw 
is largely well converted to a dramatic piece, if occasionally a little episodic (as is the way with all biopics) and overlong towards the end.
Whenever a star, director, writer, or other key creative dies during or around the production of a film, it’s apparently tempting to draw some kind of correlation between their death and the themes or content of their work. To force such a link between the murder of writer/director/co-star Adrienne Shelly and Waitress seems inappropriate, however, when the film is so much about life.
I know I 
Waitress is a “woman’s film”, but in a good way: written and directed from a female perspective, with its central roles being female, it doesn’t pander to a perceived female demographic and nor does it bellow “this is what we women think, and it’s so different to you damn men” — it’s more subtle than that.
100Films.co.uk 