The disc: "Gigi"
The details: Technically, "Gigi" isn't the last musical made by the fabled Arthur Freed unit at MGM, but it might as well have been. It's a luxurious summing-up of the way MGM made musicals at their best - a smart book with charm, a luscious score with lilt, orchestrated and played faultlessly, with a cast you love to watch.
"Gigi" was an original adaptation of Colette's story by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, fresh from the triumph of "My Fair Lady," and I wouldn't be the first to point out that "Gigi" bears a similarity to the earlier project in both story and structure. Henry Higgins attempts to turn Eliza Doolittle into a lady, while Gigi's aunt attempts to turn her into a courtesan, with both stories set in an attractive continental past, all designed and executed with ravishing style, courtesy of Cecil Beaton.
That said, "Gigi" is a much better movie than "My Fair Lady," largely because it's guided by Vincente Minnelli at his peak, who manages to mix the mostly authentic French cast (Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Leslie Caron) with some English actors (Hermione Gingold, Isabel Jeans) so well that you barely notice. There are scenes here, mostly in the Paris locations, that remind you that Minnelli was a great visual artist.
The extras: The set comes with a new documentary that lays out how difficult the film was to make — the Paris locations went far over schedule, and MGM was in a financial dither so severe that Lerner and Loewe offered to buy the film outright. The only technical flaw to be found in the package derives from the cheap Metrocolor MGM used for the film, which brings more grain and duller colors to the wide screen than did Technicolor.
Scott Eyman writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: seyman AT pbpost.com