Gigi

Gigi (1958) — watch online on iFILM, Vincente Minnelli's MGM musical that swept the 1959 Academy Awards with nine Oscars, including Best Picture. Screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, adapted from Colette's novella.

Turn-of-the-century Paris. Young Gigi is being groomed by her grandmother and aunt in the precise arts of a courtesan — posture, conversation, how to choose a cigar — all in preparation to become the companion of Gaston Lachaille, the city's most eligible and most bored bachelor. Leslie Caron plays Gigi with a stubbornness that makes every etiquette lesson feel like a small act of resistance. Louis Jourdan is Gaston; Maurice Chevalier narrates with the knowing warmth of a man who has seen everything Paris has to offer and enjoyed most of it.

What Minnelli and Lerner pull off is a musical that charm its way through a story with uncomfortable edges — Gigi is being sold into a system, and the film knows it even as it keeps the songs light. That tension is what keeps it from feeling like a museum piece. Stream Gigi (1958) online on iFILM.