Directed by: Vincente Minnelli
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner
The other Oscars it won: Minnelli (Best Director); Lerner (Best Adapted Screenplay); Joseph Ruttenberg (Best Cinematography – Color); William A. Horning, E. Preston Ames, Henry Grace, and F. Keogh Gleason (Best Art Direction); Cecil Beaton (Best Costume Design); Adrienne Fazan (Best Film Editing); André Previn (Best Score – Musical); Frederick Loewe and Lerner (Best Original Song)
What it beat for Best Picture: Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Defiant Ones, Separate Tables
Yes, the creepiest, most pedophiliac movie ever to win Best Picture is this list's worst. How to define "worst" in this context, especially when judging Gigi — a movie musical some people love now, and certainly many people loved in 1958 — against films that were barely movies as we currently recognize them? This list is, of course, totally subjective: I factored in my personal feelings about each movie, along with how well it has held up, how influential it is, and what it was up against. And then there's the ineffability of common wisdom, which I also have taken into account. No matter how I feel about Annie Hall or about Schindler's List, for example, I know I'm in a minority view in my dislike — and that matters. Not with Gigi, though, in which Leslie Caron plays a Parisian girl being trained to be a courtesan who ends up in a push-and-pull relationship with the much older Gaston (Louis Jordan). This is the movie that gave us that disturbing cultural artifact, the song "Thank Heaven For Little Girls." If you want disturbing psychosexual movies from 1958, let's agree that Vertigo, which was nominated only for Best Art Direction and Best Sound, is preferable. To reiterate: Gigi is the worst.