Gigi

(Vincente Minnelli, US 1958, 115 min., 35mm)

Academy Awards at 90. In turn-of-the-century Paris, Gaston Lachaille (Louis Jourdan) grows bored with upper-class women and falls in love with a young girl, Gigi (Leslie Caron), who is training to become a courtesan. Maurice Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” is just one of the wonderful songs in Lerner & Lowe’s marvelous score for this beloved Best Picture, praised by Jonas Mekas in the Village Voice for having “more imaginative use of cinema than all our recent pseudo-realist movies put together.”