ABSTRACT
American runaway production to Italy started in the fifties with the goal of unlocking blocked-lira accounts and continued in earnest in the sixties to take advantage of Italian film subsidies. Minnelli shot the film in Cinemascope and in Metrocolor against authentic backgrounds in Paris such as Maxim's, the Bois de Boulogne, the Palais de Glace, and the Tuileries. American film producers had become enamored of British popular culture and had entered into coproduction deals with British producers, creating the phenomenon known as 'Hollywood on the Thames.' The studios were free to dispose of their pre-1948 film libraries since they controlled television performance rights and all ancillary rights to their pictures Gigi won nine Academy Awards, the most any film had won before then, and was the last Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) musical to win the Best Picture award. MGM's relationship with Seven Arts Productions began in 1962 with the release of Stanley Kubrick's Lolita.
