“Like everywhere else, most people in Paris get married, but not all. There are some who will not marry, and some who do not marry. But in Paris, those who will not marry are usually men, and those who do not marry are usually women,” explains Honore Lachaille in the opening lines of Gigi (1958). Honore, a wealthy older man obsessed with pursuing young women for his fleeting romantic interludes, next directs the film viewer’s attention to two groups of women who are passing by his location in the park. The first group of women are all married, the ones who “stood their ground and won.” Honore respects them, but turns quickly to look at two unmarried women in a carriage, noting the “pathetic rags they wear.” At least at the beginning of the film, then, it seems that marriage is a more desirable situation than singleness.

But why are the single women penniless? My take on this is two-fold: either they are women who have refused to become mistresses and have missed out on the financial benefits of being “kept” women, or they are former mistresses who have been passed around so much that they are no longer desirable and no longer have any “income.” Whatever the reason for their financial struggle, according to Honore these women are those who “do not marry,” implying a definition: because these particular people are women, they avoid marriage (this is true of Gigi’s demimonde family composed of all women). Men, on the other hand, are not defined by their marital status, but are distinguished from women by the fact that they make a choice regarding marriage (i.e. they “will not marry”). To be blunt, why should a rich man marry if he can have endless female companionship and no-strings-attached sex for less responsibility and permanence than what he would get with a wife? Wives grow old and unattractive. Mistresses can be ever young, an endless cycle of youthfulness at one’s beck and call…only for a simple arrangement much like a business transaction.

Aunt Alicia and Gigi, pondering which dress Gigi should wear in order to snag Gaston’s affections.

Speaking of mistresses, Gigi reveals how if a woman is a man’s mistress, she must perform a certain role—the same as that of every other paramour. Gigi receives weekly (and then daily) lessons from her Aunt Alicia in bizarre “accomplishments” that will attract and hold the attentions of rich and powerful men—mastering such vital talents as how to eat cold lobster and how to recognize the most expensive jewels. Aunt Alicia, herself a famous courtesan, remains wealthy and independent in her singleness—however, she refuses to leave her home, apparently not wanting people to see her as an older woman and not desiring to fuel any additional gossip about herself since the Paris papers are overflowing with personal details about the love lives of the rich and famous.

Gaston is one of those privileged people whose every move is chronicled in the tabloids. And he hates it. Actually, he detests everything to do with his posh existence. To him, everything is “a bore.” He even sings an entire song about how dull the whole shebang is! Yet he sees something different in young Gigi. The ironic thing is that once Gaston realizes he loves Gigi because she is unlike anyone else he has ever known, he pursues her just as he would every other woman. He approaches her grandmother, Madame Alvarez, in order to make an arrangement for Gigi to become his mistress. In Gaston’s eyes, this demonstrates his great care for young Gigi, but she is appalled at the offer, initially refusing the proffered life of wealth and ease. She knows (from reading the newspaper’s tabloid headlines) that in a non-committed relationship, Gaston will soon tire of her. She will be required to act the role of mistress (putting to use all the impractical skills Aunt Alicia taught her), lowering herself to the ranks of all the other desperate women in Paris. When Gaston moves on to another woman, Gigi will have to “crawl into another man’s bed” to survive. She would become a permanent courtesan, just like her Aunt Alicia. It would be a comfortable lifestyle at first—except that Gigi would have to sacrifice herself to play a role she despises and would in the end presumably end up like Aunt Alicia—rich, paranoid, and lonely.

Gigi insists she looks beautiful when Gaston, taken aback by her maturity, ridicules her “grown-up” clothes.

For Me Then…

Ah, marriage. We talked about marriage and singleness with Marty a few weeks ago. Marriage is foundational to the plot of Gigi, but the idea of marriage is very subtle in the film. It mostly appears at the beginning and the end. In the rest of the movie, we see desperate women and dominating men. Since in 1900, women cannot (usually) respectably work jobs as men do or enjoy the riches of inheritances that allow them to squander their days in pursuing “love,” what else can women do in order to gain the comfortable lives they desire? The film seems to set up the idea of how ridiculous it is to have a relationship based on a financial arrangement or in order to ride the waves of social approval. Instead, love blossoms from friendship and respect for each other’s real selves.

Gigi insists on receiving Gaston’s respect, although she wavers a bit as an ideal feminist character when she agrees to become Gaston’s mistress. Informing him that she would “rather be miserable with you than miserable without you,” Gigi exalts love over what she views as her own personal worth and dignity. This is quite probably a naive and misguided self-sacrifice on Gigi’s part, but I think it is also possible to read in her words that Gigi knows she and Gaston would both be miserable if they were together and not married. On their one formal social appearance as a non-married couple, Gaston is appalled that his one-of-a-kind Gigi slips so easily into the hum-drum “love games” of all the other women he’s known. Pressuring Gigi to become his mistress causes her to put herself in the same proverbial box as the other “boring” women in Paris. She pours Gaston’s coffee, selects his cigar, gushes over the jewelry he gives her. Both play roles when they are in this mock-permanent relationship. But Gaston (and Gigi as well) wants something meaningful and true, not rote sexual chess games.

Gaston and Gigi in public together as a couple for the first time.

(Spoiler alert!) I think it’s highly important that Gigi doesn’t insist that Gaston marry her—he comes to this realization on his own: the only way he can be with the Gigi whom he loves is to remove the pressure of survival from her by giving her stability and permanence in a romantic relationship. Only when Gaston also sees the misery inherent in the instability of his suggested relationship with Gigi does he propose. The constancy and contentment of their married state is evident at the end of the film. Gigi seems once more her slightly flighty, effervescent self; and Gaston seems much more gratified and relaxed. The film closes on a high note, but let’s think back to those women Honore views at the beginning of the film–the married ones vs. the never-married ones. Gigi joins the former group, but the film really presents us with a large question mark regarding the fate of women who are not so fortunate as Gigi is in the end. For that reason, I don’t think that this film is worthy of flat-out dismissal, for its theme regarding the place of women in a male-dominated society transcends its own decade and resonates in our own sexual-assault-ridden times.