Not too long ago, I read an article ranking the Best Picture winners. Gigi (1958) (Arthur Freed Productions, Inc./Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) was placed dead last in the list, labeled as exalting pedophilia, and dismissed as junk. Well, I’m not denying there are some issues in the film—especially when we view it through our 21^st-century lenses, but I don’t think it’s unredeemable or completely lacking in worthwhile content to discuss.

In fact, Gigi is quite a rarity in the family of BP winners—it’s one of only a handful of films to win every Academy Award for which it was nominated. Other films to have achieved this unique feat are 1927/28’s Wings (but all the films pretty much won if they were nominated back then…), 1931/32’s Grand Hotel (which won the only Oscar it was nominated for), 1934’s It Happened One Night (the first winner of the “Big Five”), 1987’s The Last Emperor, and most recently 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (which took home all 11 of the statuettes for which it was nominated). Gigi is also unusual in that it received no acting nominations, something only 11 BPs have done (this is the seventh one of these films that we have discussed). So let’s just list the nine awards Gigi did win: Film Editing, Writing (Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium), Music (Scoring of a Musical Picture), Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography (Color), Directing for Vincente Minnelli, and Best Motion Picture. If you’re wondering what that ninth award was, it was for Best Song for “Gigi”—only the second Best Picture winner to capture this award (the first was Going My Way).

Gigi, frustrated at her “lessons” in recognizing quality jewels.

Gigi originated as a novella published in 1944 by a French writer who went by the pen name Colette. Born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in 1873, Colette married Henry Gauthier-Villars (“Willy”) in 1893. Willy, himself a writer and publisher, encouraged his wife to become an author. Her first four novels, referred to as the Claudine stories, were great successes—although, due to the status of women in the late nineteenth century, the stories were published under Willy’s name and he held the copyright to them, a tragic reality for Colette after she and Willy divorced in 1910. Impoverished and desperate to earn enough for food, Colette survived off what she could make in stage performances, sometimes acting out vignettes of her own character Claudine. During this time, she captured the frustration and injustice of her first-hand knowledge of women’s required dependence on men in her novel La Vagabonde.

The renowned French author Colette at her desk, date unknown.

After remarrying in 1912, Colette was able to devote more time to writing, publishing a couple of works dealing with relationships between older women and younger men—which was ironic because Colette’s affair with her sixteen-year-old stepson helped to derail her second marriage in 1924 (that’s quite disturbing…). A few years later she met and married her third husband, Maurice Goudeket, who was Jewish. By the 1920s and 30s, Colette was being referred to as the greatest French female writer, and her works continued to address issues women faced with marriage, sexuality, and independence. A resident of Paris during the Second World War, Colette lived in terror that her husband would be arrested and sent to a concentration camp (he was arrested once by the Nazis and released due to the influence of the French wife of a German ambassador). She recorded her war experiences in two volumes of memoirs published in English in 1975 as Looking Backwards. Toward the end of the war (1944), Colette published her most famous work, Gigi. The work was made into a French film in 1949 and adapted into a Broadway play of the same name in 1951. While on a trip to Monte Carlo, Colette herself discovered the former ballerina who would be the star of the play. The dancer’s name was Audrey Hepburn. When Colette died in 1954, she was the first French woman to be given a state funeral.

Maurice Chevalier in Gigi–his character discourages many from loving this film. So very creepy…

Colette’s Gigi is born a member of the demimonde, “the class of women considered to be of doubtful morality and social standing.” The situations of such women are already morally questionable, but what makes the character of Gigi in particular both unnerving and sympathetic is the fact that she is so young–still in school, still a teenager–in a world that is male-dominated, ruthless, and heartless. Gigi is taught to ignore feelings of the heart, to love money, and to cater to power. Gigi the film, therefore, gives rise to issues of women’s place in society, in personal relationships with men, and in connections with each other. So, setting aside the creepiness of Maurice Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” I think the film really opens a door for discussions about women’s rights and the morality of a society that requires blatant sexuality from women without granting them equality.

For more thoughts on Gigi and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!