Gigi, and The Reluctant Debutante
More movies at the Stanford tonight. Subrata and I and three others (gaming buddies Mark, Yvette and Kelly - no, not of Rollie and Kelly whom Ceej often gets together with, but the girlfriend of Mark's roommate) went to a good Indian restaurant near Subrata's place. Ate a lot of food, but didn't overstuff myself. Maybe my metabolism is kicking into gear with all the exercise. Indian food around here is good, but expensive.
The first movie was Gigi (1958), which takes place in Paris - I think around the turn of the century, since they had telephones and automobiles, but also many horse-drawn carriages, and no mention of the First World War. A young man named Gaston is a high-profile member of the upper social class, romancing many women, but he's generally bored stiff with life in Paris. He finds it repetitive and oppressive. His one true pleasure is visiting some old friends of his Uncle's, including a young girl-about-to-become-a-woman, Gigi.
Gigi is a musical, and a love story, since Gaston eventually realizes that he's fallen in love with Gigi. But she's reluctant to enter his high-profile social circle, especially since she's been getting 'educated' in upper class social circles by her grandmother and aunt. It's a pretty quirky film, with people referring to Gigi's grandmother's apartment as a dump (where can I find a dump like that?), and the sudden, rather awkward revelation on Gaston's part that he's in love with Gigi.
The highlight of the film is Maurice Chevalier as Honore, Gaston's uncle, who mugs his way through the film, and sings the film's signature piece, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls". He's obviously having a grand time, although I didn't think his role was as meaty as the one he had in Love in the Afternoon. (Subrata disagreed with this, though.)
On the whole, though, this is not an especially good film. The soundtrack is disappointing; only "Thank Heaven" and "I Remember It Well" (the only song in the film that I recognized) are really notable. (Well, okay, "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore" is cute.) The story is a little too pat, a little too not-entirely-believable, to really work for me.
Next up was The Reluctant Debutante (also 1958), about a teenaged American girl (Sandra Dee - first film I've ever seen her in) who moves to London to be with her father (Rex Harrison) and stepmother, the latter of whom decides she should 'come out' as a debutante in the coming weeks, which Dee thinks is simply ridiculous.
Adapted from a stage play (which is quite evident), Debutante starts slowly, but eventually turns fall-down-funny. Harrison has ample opportunity to ham his way through some ridiculous scenes as he tries to navigate the absurdity of the debutantes' balls. Dee's character, Jane, is quite intelligent, reasonably willful, and meets an American boy who plays drums in a band which plays at the balls. Of whom her stepmother disapproves, of course. We get scenes with her parents trying to keep an eye on her during a ball to keep her away from this young man, a lengthy scene where Harrison searches desperately for alcohol to see him through the ball, and later has nightmares about the events. And an extended scene where Jane hooks up with the young man and doesn't come home until 5 am, as we see her parents getting driven up the wall.
It's all so wonderfully ridiculous, it's well worth seeing. It's punctuated by a stuffy young British lad with the perfect stuffy British accent and an endless interest in optimizing traffic routes. The cast is half the fun - and the script is the other half.
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