![]() ![]() Or maybe it’s Gigi herself, at its center, who finally finds the world at her feet. Maybe that’s what has kept audiences coming back for 60 years, and what earned the film an unprecedented nine Academy Awards, including best picture, in 1959. In the glamorous Paris of Gigi, nothing is what it seems, yet everything is a joy to behold-a sort of dazzling musical merry-go-round. Minnelli, I’m so sorry, but this is the head waiter of Maxim’s! This is not an actor.” Minnelli’s assistant rushed over, whispering into the director’s ear, “Mr. “Will somebody teach that man how to hold a menu?” he called. Finally, Minnelli pointed to the headwaiter. Caron remembers Minnelli asking them to repeat the sequence over and over, without explaining what was wrong. At the beginning of the scene, Caron and Louis Jourdan were to sweep into the restaurant, greet the headwaiter, and receive menus as they sat down at their table. The extras themselves baffled him a bit more. During a crowded scene at Maxim’s, he used the restaurant’s art nouveau mirrors to emphasize the colored plumes and top hats of the stylish throng-painstakingly positioning his equipment so that the period elements could be seen, but his electric lights and cameras could not. “In 1900, nobody smiled-let your face repose.”ĭirector Vincente Minnelli insisted on authenticity as well. “Don’t smile,” Caron remembered Beaton telling her. “He never stopped!” The images, taken in natural light, are as evocative of Gigi’s production as they are of its Belle Époque period. “Between scenes, he would drag us into the landscape and make beautiful portraits of us,” she said. Caron recalled that Beaton was also responsible for Gigi’s lavish scenery, though he was uncredited for it, and that he took photographs on his own throughout filming. ![]()
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