Some of you may've noticed that to get through as many of these films as
possible I am trying to group them into different categories and I
noticed that two of the winning films from the 1950s were both set in
France, featured song and dance and both starred Leslie Caron. However
there was also a third nominee set in France which featured a small
amount of merriment so that got included as well so lets kick off with
the winner from the 1952 ceremony.
That
being Vincent Minnelli's An American in Paris an all singing/all
dancing spectacular featuring Gene Kelly and the aforementioned Ms.
Caron. The film features on two down-and-out Americans living and trying
to survive in Paris, Kelly's painter Jerry Mulligan and Oscar Levant's
pianist Adam Cook. Mulligan's artwork gets noticed by a wealthy American
woman named Milo who agrees to sponsor Jerry and also falls in love with
him while Mulligan meets Caron's enchanting Lisa and falls for her
unaware that she is already seeing singer Henri Baurel an acquaintance of
Jerry's through Adam. As time goes on Lisa and Jerry become more and
more attached then Henri is offered a job in America and he and Lisa
plan to marry but at the last moment Henri realises that Jerry and Lisa
are in love and lets them be together. An American in Paris is a great
old school musical but whether it deserved to win Best Picture is
another debate altogether however it deserve to win Oscars for its
cinematography, score, costumes and set (not sure about the screenplay
award though). I enjoyed the interplay between Caron and Kelly but for
me the best performances came from Nina Foch as Milo and Levant whose
scene where he imagines he is conducting and playing in a concert hall
was one of my favourite scenes alongside the last fifteen minutes of the
film in which Jerry imagines his life alongside Lisa before she returns
to him. A bright, colourful extravaganza An American in Paris has
memorable songs like I've Got Rhythm and S'Wonderful and is an enjoyable
ride however I don't think it is truly a classic film.
A
nominee from the 1953 ceremony is Moulin Rouge, a film title most of us
attribute to a 2001 film which was also nominated for Best Picture. The
1953 film does have some singing and dancing but most of it features
the story of Tolouse LaTrec potrayed in the modern film by John
Leguizamo and here by Jose Ferrer. The first 20 minutes or so are
probably the most entertaining and vibrant showing life in the Moulin
Rouge full of drinking, can-can girls and Zsa Zsa Gabor's lead singer.
However LaTrec's story is one of heartbreak in flashback we learn that
he left his family home to pursue a career as a painter after he found
out no girl would love him because he's a cripple. In the modern day his
life doesn't go much better he enters into a relationship with a
prostitute which ends when he becomes suspicious of her and she keeps
taking money from him. He finds solace in his offbeat paintings off the
Moulin Rouge and other famous Parisian landmarks and gains a reputation
for his work. He also starts a new relationship with Myriamme a lovely
girl who loves him but once again he feels that she just keeps him
around for amusement and leaves it too late to save her from marrying
someone else. The film ends with the announcement that he will be the
first living artist to have painting displayed in The Louvre and then we
see him visited by images of his paintings before popping his clogs.
Moulin Rouge is thematically quite a bleak film with Jose Ferrer's
Tolouse being a very dour personality and one who at times I found
fairly alienating. The best thing about the film is its colour
cinematography, which bizarrely didn't even get an Oscar nomination,
which brings the Moulin Rouge to life and the best performances in my
opinion come from those who work there. The way Tolouse's pictures are
transposed into the film and how they meet him as he dies are also quite
splendidly done. Overall a good biopic which is often bleak and saved
by the colour and opulence of its titular establishment.
Finally
we have Leslie Caron on winning form yet again here as the eponymous
heroine in Gigi, the winner of the final Oscar ceremony in the 1950s.
The film is light and full of humourous performances which is odd giving
the dark subject matter of young girls being groomed to be courtesans
for wealthy Parisian men. However Gigi's training isn't going at all
well as she doesn't really want to be in her lessons and instead likes
spending time with Gaston who visits her and her grandmother. Throughout
the film Gaston realises that Gigi is no longer a child and falls in
love with her. Her great aunt then trains her up to be Gaston's cortesan
but she realises she doesn't want this sort of life for herself and
through a sequence of events it suddenly dawns of both of them that they
want to be together and at the end of the film are happily man and
wife. Narrating events for part of the film is Maurice Chevalier's
Honore Lachaille after watching several of his 1930s films for this
project its odd now to see him playing the supporting role of the
experienced older man but in 1958 he had aged somewhat he still gets to
sing the most memorable song 'Thank Heaven for Little Girls' though and
did receive the Lifetime Achievement award the night Gigi swept the
board. And it did indeed breaking the record for Oscar wins but only
holding that record for one year before Ben-Hur came along. The film
itself is OK again its fairly entertaining and Caron has improved as an
actress from her time on An American in Paris here being possibly the
most likeable character of the bunch. The song and dance sequences are a
joy but at times I felt the pace lagged a bit especially when Caron and
her female relatives were off-screen and instead we had to deal with
Gaston's woes which I didn't really care about. Overall an entertaining
piece of musical cinema which had some lovely costumes but wasn't a
spectacular picture and again didn't feel to me like a Best Picture
Winner.
That's your lot from France and as your captain I hope you enjoyed your journey.
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