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Daniele Delorme is a turn-of-the-century teenage courtesan-in-training in the French romantic comedy Gigi (1948). Instructed by her beloved grandmother Yvonne de Bray (Mamita) and glamorous courtesan aunt Gaby Morlay (Alicia) in the art of using her feminine wiles, 16-year-old Gigi learns how to select a man’s cigar, determine the value of the various jewels she will be given by her rich lovers, chew her meat while continuing to carry on a conversation and other priceless tidbits in the feminine arsenal of seduction.

Her first test in l’amour is a plan hatched by her aunt and grandmother who want to unite her with a longtime, wealthy family friend and playboy Gaston (Franck Villard). Gaston has recently had his heart broken by a mistress who betrayed him with her ice skating instructor. The scene where Gaston and fellow rake Honore (Jean Tissier) ride in their car coats and goggles on a primitive automobile to the countryside to expose the lovers’ secret liaison is one of many amusing moments in director Jacqueline Audry’s film.

The man who once brought her candy and played innocent games of cards with Gigi is suddenly transformed into a romantic prospect and the schoolgirl soon falls in love with Gaston. But Gigi surprises both her grandmother and her aunt with the depth of her feminine arsenal of seduction when she actually makes playboy Gaston fall in love with her in this sophisticated French story of true love triumphing over all. The film works so well in large part due to Delorme who conveys both delightful innocence and an independent spirit that surely play no small part in wooing Gaston.

Esteemed French woman of letters Colette penned the novel Gigi in 1945 when she was 72, which was then adapted by French screenwriter Pierre Laroche for this 1948 screen adaptation. But the more familiar Gigi is undoubtedly the 1958 Technicolor Hollywood musical starring Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier as Honore. MGM producer Arthur Freed decided on a musical version of Gigi after watching the French adaptation. In the interim, Gigi had enjoyed some success in a Broadway version starring Audrey Hepburn, who declined to appear in Freed’s film.

Gigi was made by the French director Jacqueline Audry, who once worked as an assistant director under Pabst, Ophuls and others and conveys more of the culture and sophistication of the director’s background than the 1958 Hollywood version. Colette, who wrote the novel on which Gigi was based, was also a music hall dancer, mime and a multitalented woman of letters who wrote books, screenplays and even film criticism as early as 1916, and whose novels often deal with the pain and pleasures of love. Colette injected a fair amount of scandal into her stage work as well, baring her breast in one performance and causing a riot at the Moulin Rouge when she mimed copulation onstage. Audry would go on to direct three more adaptations of works by Colette starring Daniele Delorme.

1.46GB | 1 h 39 min | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/C19335402505A91/Gigi.1949.DVDRip.x264-FuFu.mkv
https://nitroflare.com/view/75D8EC70E38A73F/Gigi.1949.DVDRip.x264-FuFu_-_eng_02.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Jacqueline Audry – Gigi (1949) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

In a grand apartment, where the disorder of an elderly couple and the order of old aunt Léonie are mixed together, Michel is the pampered child of this strange “roulotte” who seems to be rolling away from the world. Yvonne idolizes her son so much she forgets her husband. She would even forget herself if she did not have to take care of his insulin treatment. When Michel sleeps out for the first time, he vows to his mother (who he nicknames “Sophie”) that he loves Madeleine, a young woman who he wishes to present to her. At first reticent, then jealous and exclusive, Yvonne ends up capitulating before her son’s sorrow and his sister Léonie’s insistence. In the meantime, we discover that Madeleine already has an “old” lover who she wants to break up with, who is none other than Georges, Michel’s father. Aunt Léo attempts to bring order to this tragic comedy of life. (Wiki)

Jean Cocteau’s filming of his 1938 play ten years later is both a lesson in mise en scene and an illustration of the paradox that accentuating the theatrical aspects of theater on-screen makes them quintessentially cinematic (Cf André Bazin – What is cinema) – To my knowledge, the only other film that does this to the same degree is Kon Ichikawa’s An Actor’s Revenge. The accomplishment becomes all the more impressive if one considers how mannered and affected Cocteau’s material is. The sheltered son of a middle-aged couple living with the wife’s unmarried sister falls in love with a young woman without realizing that she’s his father’s mistress, and the terror faced by the mother at the prospect of losing her son is matched by terror faced by the mistress in being exposed. The characters may seem outlandish individually, but collectively they bring credence to one another as the plot unfolds in two claustrophobic flats, and the cast is masterful: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Yvonne de Bray, Marcel Andre, Gabrielle Dorzoat. Cocteau cuts and moves his camera in ways that are both eccentric and definitive. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)

Jean Cocteau - (1948) The Storm Within.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 40 min
Size: 	1.92 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	792x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.375
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 544 kb/s
BPP: 	0.232
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/6B3CD4FACE93D46/Jean_Cocteau_-_(1948)_The_Storm_Within.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Jean Cocteau – Les parents terribles AKA The Storm Within (1948) first appeared on Cinema of the World.