GASTON: how I tire of wealth and influence
how money bores me
MADAME ALVAREZ: we are glad you find time to visit our small apartment
the electricity is out at the moment, I hope you don’t mind
GASTON: how I tire of my string of wealthy mistresses
of the eyes of the world, always upon me
of the endless parties, of the new cars, the gallery openings, the nightclubs and the cafes
MADAME ALVAREZ: well
as you know
we are very poor
GASTON: yes, and I love that about you
promise me you will always be poor
everyone else in my life is rich and tiresome but you
MADAME ALVAREZ: if only there were some solution to both of our problems
you, who are so tired of wealth
and my family, which is, as I mentioned before, extremely poor –
GASTON: it is such a comfort to me, how poor you are
knowing you will never be jaded by the pleasures of the idle rich
if only you could get poorer and simpler by the day
MADAME ALVAREZ: well
as always
thank you for visiting and sharing our humble supper
perhaps next time we could have dinner at your home
GASTON: it would be so tiresome
all they ever serve at home are pheasants and champagne
GIGI: I am so hungry
GASTON: ahahaha
how you amuse me, Gigi
delightful
[a pause]
well, I’m off
GIGI: hello, Gaston
GASTON: what is this
what in the hell is this
GIGI: it’s a new dress
GASTON: I hate it
you look like an adult human
like a woman who might
go inside of a building
or have a conversation with someone wearing a hat
they’ve absolutely ruined you
I remember when you were a giraffe wearing a mud suit living in a cave
you were splendid then
GIGI: I can go change if you prefer –
GASTON: no, don’t bother
you’re ruined now
I watched this as a little girl when I went through my MGM Musicals… well I was going to call it a phase but that implies it ended. Anyway.
Gigi confused the EFF out of me. I couldn’t wrap my brain around how she was supposed to be so different?? When she changed her dress and hair?? But it was the same woman what the?? And Gaston was so old and what??
And let’s not even TRY to unpack my 10-year-old’s concept of what a courtesan was, so the ending when he proposed was completely lost on me. I had no idea what the big deal was.
That being said, I Remember It Well remains one of my all-time favorite musical numbers.
Maurice Chevallier 4Life!
I will always <3 <3 <3 Maurice Chevalier.
“You wore a gown of gold.
“I was all in blue.”
Hermione Gingold, were you wearing THAT DRESS?
(I do love that song, though. Older couples who are kind of romantic and kind of platonic and live apart but obviously are each other’s besties are a Sign I Will Like a Work of Fiction.)
Also my grandmother used to play the VHS of “Gigi” for all the cousins when we went to my grandparents’ house for family gatherings as children, so I have warm feelings for it notwithstanding.
Yeah, it gives me Nana feelings too. 🙂
My dad tells me she’d host evenings with friends where they’d all go through a musical together, reading the dramatic parts and then playing the record when songs came up. That still kinda sounds like fun.
My mother decided to show me that movie at some tender age, probably around 12. We finished it, and she realized that she wasn’t sure what movie she’d remembered, but Gigi was not that movie, and we agreed not to speak of it.
Maurice Chevallier!!! He earned my undying devotion in this movie. I’m so glad other people also read his performance of the song as super yucky. I adored this movie as a child – I think actually because it wasn’t just about falling desperately love and getting married. I didn’t read the ladies as mistresses exactly, but I liked that the people in the movie had multiple relationships, not just one “true love”.
1. Gaston’s virgin/whore complex is gonna be a real problem for their sex life once Gigi gets pregnant.
2. “all they ever serve at home are pheasants and champagne”
Read this as “PEASANTS and champagne” and it took a shockingly long minute to register anything amiss.
You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten peasant braised in wine, but be sure to instruct your chef that a long cooking time is ESSENTIAL. All that working can leave them… stringy.
Really, a confit would be best. REALLY cook that fat in.
Darling, they’re not ducks! If your peasants are fat, you’re not working them hard enough.
(Ok breaking character to say, just in case it needs to be said, that OF COURSE I’m joking about eating poor people, that would be ridiculous and morally wrong. Eat the rich instead)
They’re tastier!
After swiftly reading your cooking tips I do have a modest proposal that you might find persuasive…
Somehow me and a good friend ended up with this running joke about how I’m vegan except for babies. And every time something about my mostly-veganism comes up in conversation, she’ll say “Except for babies,” and I try to affect a faraway look and say “they’re just so tender.”
I’m LOL’ing just typing it up. WHY do we find this so funny. It’s actually….really awful?
It is making me laugh too!
“I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for the landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.”
How to cook FOR forty humans.
To Serve Man
Me too!
So did I!
you look like an adult human
like a woman who might
go inside of a building
or have a conversation with someone wearing a hat
Read as poetry,
with all the
pauses
that entails
this sounds really quite profound.
Okay, my english major and poetry classes are going to show here, and I’m *sorry* but you’re not supposed to pause at the end of lines of poetry. You read them according to the punctuation. Enjambment.
You’re right, though, Mallory is, as always, profound.
hello fellow nerd
I was also an English major, and am aware that you don’t PAUSE at the end of each line when reading poetry aloud
but there is a still a sense of space and rhythm
created by the words’ position on the page.
edit also I do not know you but am going to imagine that you end each of your paragraphs with the name of a literary device. Catachresis.
I love just reading the poem the way the soft animal of my body wants to read it. (With apologies to Mary Oliver.)
“Gigiiiiii why you’ve been growing up before my eyeeees!”
What, you mean, like a person??!
“Gigiiiiii why you’ve been growing up before my eyeeees!”
What, you mean like a person?!!
When I was about six years old, I walked into the living room while my dad was watching this movie.
“What’s this about?” I asked.
“Well, it’s about that girl there, and she’s training to become a courtesan, which–”
“A courtesan?” I yelled. “Ewww!” and I ran out of the room.
Later, I heard my dad ask my mom where the hell I’d learned what a courtesan was. (In retrospect, I didn’t know. I had just heard the word in a negative context and decided it must be The Worst. And I still haven’t sat through the whole movie.)
How is there no mention of Thank Heaven for Little Girls??? I, too, love I Remember it Well — but I just can’t take the creep factor that is the very beginning of the movie.
Gigi is probably the *only* musical I love, but I am so conflicted about recommending it to adult humans. I cringe at how much I love it. But I do love it so much.
Check the tags!
AAAHH! Sure he’s all twinkly and that but.. but..
I have fallen into Mallory’s trap. Please send one granola bar.
Read the tags
In the revival they have Madame Alvarez sing it which works a whole lot better. Maurice Chevalier is the only man who could sing it and have it be clearly so very avuncular and not creepy. Well, except for all the gender essentialism, but other than that.
Literally the only man in all of human history who could pull that song off. HO HO HO, I AM SO GALLIC AND FULL OF ZEST FOR LIFE, HOW WONDERFUL THAT CHILDREN GROW UP AND EXPERIENCE THINGS, I AM THE HUMAN EQUIVALENT OF THE CANDLESTICK FROM BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
also yes, Gigi is maybe not the movie for you if you are looking for an escape from gender essentialism
It launched my obsession with books about codified femininity (like courtesans and the geisha tradition and bombshells and stuff like that). Oh, and reading about fancy wines and cheeses.
I would like your book recommendations, please.
GIGI: FU this dress rocks and you’re a dick and no I won’t say sorry.
FTFY. One of my favorite moments in the film. Almost makes up for her caving later and agreeing to be his mistress even though she’s already explained what a shitty offer that is.
Leslie Caron deserves some of the non-stop worship that Audrey Hepburn gets.
Amen and amen!
I admit that despite not liking Gigi very much in theory, back when I had TCM, I ended up watching it every single time I happened to stumble across it because Leslie Caron is a beautiful magical mythical being and I can’t not watch her.
I’m this way with Daddy Long Legs.
watch Lili and come back here and say that, I dare you! unless you have already.
I have no idea if she is 20 playing 12 in that, or 16 playing 16, or some unobjectionable adult age playing that same age with a traumatic brain injury or profound mental incapacity. probably I would be able to tell if I understood the cardigan/haircut age coding of the 1950s better. it definitely beats GiGi for glorified child molester vibes and has seduction through hand puppets too.
I remember seeing that for the first time and thinking, “No, surely not, that’s uncomfortable, no matter how hot Mel Ferrer is.” And so I watched it, fascinated, a few more times. Obvs, some issues here.
Caron was a truly gifted dramatic actress as well. I highly recommend watching her performance in “The L-Shaped Room” (1962), if you haven’t already. (She got an Oscar nomination for that).
I’ve actually lived with people who think nine-year-olds should be marriageable. The Little Girls song does not set off my alarms with that context. It’s a cute song.
A friend of mine’s comment re: that song is “at least he talks about how awesome it is that they grow up, that’s like the least creepy way that song could have gone!” Which is true.
And I also heart both “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Any More” and “Paris is Paris Again”. But Gaston can eat a bee.
“Gaston”, like “Bundy”, may be on the list of Someone Good Must Have Been Named This Sometime, But Nobody We Know.
It is the definition of a Problematic Song, but you definitely feel like Chevalier is not saying “how cool that preadolescents are romantically available to me” but “Ah, girls! Zey become WEEMAIN. And I love ZE WEEMAIN.”
“I was once a boy, and I remember liking girls, when I was a boy. And then I became a man, and the girls became women! Marvelous!”
It really is great when you put it that way.
It sounds quite sweet like that. I always heard it as sort of “OF COURSE because they grow up. Hur hur. That’s definitely why. No, I’m not winking at you, I have something in my eye.”
But I always rather keen on the seemingly lesbian 90s Pepsi version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRN_kOcQrUc
My boyfriend told me that, when he was little, he cried after his mom explained that Gigi was going to be a prostitute.
I mean! Aunt Alicia had a pretty great life as one!
“a TOPAZ?! In MY collection?”
I love this movie SO MUCH. I may have gotten all the wrong messages from it because I pretty much learned that I wanted to be Aunt Alicia when I grew up. I really don’t care about Gaston at all (except that he is tres beautiful).
My mother once said that she wished the end of the movie were Gigi and Gaston and their children playing tennis on the beach rather than that god-awful scene of her looking so very odiously conventional in the park. The whole reason Gaston loves her is because she isn’t like that. Also, that costume is so ugly, so very, very ugly it should have been censored. Obviously my mother is a wise woman and that’s my head canon ending.
PS A topaz!! In *MY* jewelry?!!
Are you mad?!??!
dipped.
And the poor thing doesn’t even know it.
THE WAY SHE SAYS T O P A Z
That last outfit is SO AWFUL, but I thank heaven for it because it inspired TLo to write this:
“Anyway, the movie ends with Gigi wearing the vagina hat to end all vagina hats, which apparently means that her vagina is no longer open for business.”
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2007/07/musical-monday-g…
I miss Musical Monday.
Oh, it was (has been, I can’t help it) one of my favorite movies since I saw it during a PBS pledge drive when I was about 11. The clothes were (are) just sooooo beautiful. That white dress with the black armpit feathers–I die! And that handsome worldly Louis Jourdan, oh la la.
“Only the best emeralds have that hint of elusive blue.” Sigh.
Only years later did I realize how pervy the whole thing was.
The highlight of Gigi for me is I Don’t Understand The Parisians. She’s so “Ugh, God, these odious PEOPLE with their KISSING and ROMANCE. Revolting.”
giraffe in a mud suit oh no
It’s this and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers that make me feel so conflicted. So catchy! So fun! Wait, WHAT ARE THESE ABOUT??!
It makes me absolutely insane that theaters still do 7B47B. I mean, the “happy” ending is when the fathers force their daughters to marry the men the fathers think raped them! Because, well, you raped our daughters so we were going to kill you, but you may have impregnated them so instead of killing you we’re going to make our daughters live with you forever.
I mean, I know there was no actual rape, but the fathers didn’t know that! And there WAS a bunch of women being violently abducted against their will. GAH.
Never ever stop to think about the actual plot of Seven Brides. Just enjoy the dancing and the costumes and the spirited singing. Never EVER think about the plot.
Guys, how old was Gigi supposed to be? And how much time passed in the movie while Gigi went from a school girl to changing her outfit and suddenly being A Woman even though Gaston had been around her like, that whole time?
My understanding at the time was that we saw her go from about fifteen to about nineteen… But I have no idea what that is based on.
Fifteen or sixteen? At what age did British debutantes come out? I think that would be around eighteen– and the whole purpose was to put them on the marraige market and preferably have them engaged by the end of the season.
So this one time my parents took me to an old restaurant that was opera themed and where you had dinner while people sang showtunes at you. And at one point, a man came off the stage and sang ‘Thank Heaven for Little Girls’ at me from his knees while the spotlight was on me and I wanted to DIE of embarrassment. That is just NOT an ok thing to do to a shy child with no warning, ok?
So the fact that the song itself is majorly creepy is sort of a side-problem for me
I love this movie. I’ll love it for the rest of my life. It’s bonkers, but I love it. AND it has enabled me to find one of the greatest easter eggs/scoring jokes of all time:
In the scene in Clueless where Cher comes down the stairs in the white Calvin Cline “dress” and Paul Rudd’s character sees her in an attractive love interest way for the first time, instead of a platonic little sister way, the song playing is ‘Gigi’! The song Gaston sings when he stops seeing Gigi in a platonic little sister way and starts seeing her in an attractive love interest (mistress-y) type of way. The creepiest love song for my two favourite creepy romances.
“Gigi, you’re not at all
The funny awkward little girl I knew
Oh no, overnight there’s been
A breathless change in you
…
When did your sparkle turn to fire
And your warmth become desire?
Oh, what miracle has made you
The way you are?”
A: Rigorous tutoring from her veteran Aunt of the sex trade
I still can’t believe they tried to put up a less creepy broadway revival this year. If Honoré doesn’t sing “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” it’s not Gigi.
And I even feel a little bit better about Clueless than I do about Emma. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Mr. Knightly, but it is definitely one of those stories that you don’t want to think about very hard.
Thank you for that link! Reading that was like watching a very adult set of Viewmaster slides. I could use more of those in my life. 🙂
I love just reading the poem the way the soft animal of my body wants to read it. (With apologies to Mary Oliver.)
This is great