You've probably seen a lithograph by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Possibly, you've hung one in your dorm room, at one time, or in your home. Here's a film that combines spectacular lively entertainment from the famous Moulin Rouge, where Toulouse-Lautrec drew many of his sketches, with the slightly dull story of the artist's life of dissipation. One perhaps wishes that there were more of the former and less of the latter in this picture, but it's still a worthwhile film overall.

Historical Background: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) was one of the leading French artists in the latter half of the nineteenth century, along with Rodin, Seurat, and Gauguin. He was born into an aristocratic family in Albi. His parents were the Count and Countess de Toulouse-Lautrec. In 1878 and 1879 he broke each of his legs, in separate accidents. He also had a hereditary bone disorder that prevented proper recovery from the breaks. As a result, his legs never grew to full length, though his torso continued to grow to normal adult proportions. Perhaps spurred on by his disability, he became an artist, exhibiting his works as early as 1885. As a young man, he moved to Montmartre, the artists' district of Paris and began painting the nightlife, in the hilltop nightclubs and brothels. He was no mere observer of the scene, however, participating actively in the dissolute lifestyle. In contrast to other artists who depicted the Montmartre scene objectively, as outsiders, Toulouse-Lautrec's approach was more sympathetic and subjective. Toulouse-Lautrec had something of a symbiotic relationship with the dancers, singers, and prostitutes. They provided the subject matter for his sketches, paintings, and lithographs, while he immortalized the likes of entertainers Jane Avril, May Belfort, Chocolat, La Goulue (a.k.a. Louise Weber), Aristide Bruant, and Yvette Guilbert.

Toulouse-Lautrec's style reveals influences of Edgar Degas and of Japanese prints (also an influence on Van Gogh during that same time period (see my review of Vincent and Theo)). The scenes in the work of Toulouse-Lautrec are cropped in an unusual way and have areas of flat color, without shadows or highlights. There's often a dynamic slant to the picture's spaces. Toulouse-Lautrec was one of the first masters of lithography. Prints of his posters soon spread throughout Paris, and beyond. His work greatly popularized the nightclubs of Montmartre, making them more fashionable and less exotic. Toulouse-Lautrec died at just thirty-six years of age, from alcoholism and syphilis.

In a sense, the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec ultimately destroyed what they depicted. One of the film's characters puts it thusly: "Oh, I know I'm making millions, but I liked the Moulin Rouge as she was, lighthearted and hot-blooded, a little strumpet who thought only of tonight. Now she is grown up and knows better. She has money in her stocking, wears corsets, and never drinks a drop too much. Worst of all, she never sees her old friends anymore. She has gone into society. Last night, she entertained a cabinet minister and his wife and daughter. It's disgusting!"

The Story: There's really not much story to this biopic. We are shown just enough of the childhood of Toulouse-Lautrec to learn how his growth was stunted after a fall (simplified from two accidents to one), down a marble staircase. He discovers in adolescence and early adulthood that his deformity is a severe handicap to his hopes for romance. An old childhood girlfriend, Denise de Frontiac (Maureen Swanson), sharply refuses his offer of marriage. He decides to make a clean break from the provincial aristocratic life and heads to Paris. There he paints and drinks and has a perverse relationship with a girl of the street, Maria Charlet (Colette Marchand), who abuses him verbally and toys with his affections to gain his financial generosity. They finally part ways after a spat, when he refuses to allow her back in the door.

As an artist, Toulouse-Lautrec is widely respected. Dancers like La Goulue (Katherine Kath), Aicha (Muriel Smith), and Chocolat (Rupert John) compete for his attention. La Goulou and Aicha even end up in cat fights more than once. Toulouse-Lautrec's art dealer, Maurice Joyant (Lee Montague), encourages him as well, sometimes even to the point of an excess of optimism that Toulouse-Lautrec finds irritating. Toulouse-Lautrec even ultimately gains the interest of moneyed buyers, like Comondo and King Milo IV of Serbia (played by the great Theodore Bikel, in a cameo). Toulouse-Lautrec also retains the emotional support of his devoted mother (Claude Nollier), but what he lacks is a younger woman who can overlook his defect and love him romantically. By the time a genuine opportunity for love presents itself, in 1900, in the form of Myriamme Hayam (Suzanne Flon), Toulouse-Lautrec is too filled with self-loathing and self-pity to respond appropriately to the possibility. He's also too thoroughly addicted to alcohol by that stage in his life. Soon, the combination of a drunken binge and another fall down a long staircase finishes him off.

Themes: If there's a lesson to be learned from the sad but brilliantly productive life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, it's that happiness might sometimes become available if one can avoid lapsing too soon in life into terminal despair. Had Toulouse-Lautrec controlled his drinking and remained upbeat, he might very well have been able to find love with Myriamme Hayam. The human psyche can only take so much, however, and Toulouse-Lautrec had apparently weathered all the suffering that he could, without the comfort of alcohol-induced oblivion. One can't fairly critique the man's choices without having walked in his shoes.

Production Values: This film is such a mixed bag of pluses and minuses that it's hard to know how to appraise it. I had the odd experience, while preparing to write this review, of reading consecutively two reviews with completely opposite viewpoints, one utterly glowing in every respect and the other equally a denunciation of the film. The film received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor, and walked away with two trophies, for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Costume Design. My contention is that it fully deserved the two trophies that it won but none of the others, and probably didn't even warrant nomination in four of the other categories.

The screenplay suffers from several shortcomings. The film opens brilliantly with a half-hour long sequence in the Moulin Rouge that is colorful, vibrant, exciting, and altogether successful. Unfortunately, the film never again captures that level of excitement. The last hour-and-a-half of the movie wallows too much in ever-deepening levels of tedium and despondency. As a biopic, the film certainly has to be true to the bleak particulars of its subject's life, but there's no reason that the filmmakers couldn't have returned to the eponymous Moulin Rouge later in the story. I'm not going to compare this picture with the 2001 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, because there is simply no similarity between the films. A more instructive comparison is with Renoir's nearly contemporaneous fine film, French Cancan (1955). In contrast to Huston, Renoir knew how to build up to a climax, by saving his great cancan scene for a grand finale.

Another problem with the script for Moulin Rouge is that the dialog is wooden and stilted. There are too many unbelievably poetic or precise speeches that sound unnatural. One can perhaps believe such dialog from the mouth of the educated and artistic Toulouse-Lautrec, but not from streetwalkers and club proprietors. There's also a tinny sound to the dialog. I'm not going to complain especially about the liberties that Huston took with the facts and temporal sequencing of events in Toulouse-Lautrec's life because I'm not convinced that biographical accuracy is the highest priority for a film of this kind. It's troublesome, however, that the film focuses so much on the pitiful and unsuccessful love life of the artist rather than his brilliantly successful artistic life. Why is it that most film biographies have to be framed as romances? Does artistic life count for nothing?

The film's strong point is its colorful portrayal of its time and place. The sets, art design, and costumes are indeed très magnifique, as the Oscar trophies in those categories would imply. Ossie Morris was the cinematographer responsible for the brilliant colors, though he obviously had a lot of help, in that regard, from the set and costume designers. The visuals perfectly complement Offenbach's immortal Can-Can number. Even in the duller scenes, the mise-en-scene and costumes are replete with period detail. My only difficulty with the cinematic style (after the first half-hour which is near perfect as is) is that Huston takes a mainly objective stance, distancing viewers from the protagonist. We're never given much reason to develop a lot of sympathy for the man. That's a problem because what made Toulouse-Lautrec such a great artist was his ability to immerse himself in his subject matter. Huston has thus missed a great opportunity to match his film's style to his subject's artistic style.

Films about great artists with pathetic personal lives are not uncommon. José Ferrer made a career out of playing pitiable roles, beginning with his Oscar winning performance as Cyrano de Bergerac. Here, in Moulin Rouge, he gets to play a man who runs the full gamut of pitiable conditions. In Toulouse-Lautrec, we have a cripple, a man who is an embarrassment to his father, a syphilitic alcoholic, a failure at love filled with self-loathing, a cynic and iconoclast, and, initially at least, an unappreciated artistic genius. That's pretty much a dream role for Ferrer! Ferrer had to play many of the scenes walking on his knees, using a specially made apparatus as an aid. He could only wear the device for a half-hour at a time, so one imagines that there weren't a lot of retakes. Sometimes, Huston instead employed special camera angles or trenches to create the appearance of short stature. Ferrer's performance is almost devoid of emotion, but seems to capture his character's nature.

Ferrer doesn't get enough help in some of the supporting roles, though there were excellent performances turned in my Katherine Kath, as La Goulue, Muriel Smith as Aicha, and, especially, Suzanne Flon as Myriamme Hayam. Flon's performance is the best thing about the film's last hour. Flon also worked in The Trial (1963) and The Train (1965). Zsa Zsa Gabor did a half-decent job with his role as the singer, Jane Avril, except that her lip-syncing for the song known as Where Is Your Heart in English or Moulin Des Amours in French is utterly miserable. She simply made no attempt to match the English lyrics. Colette Marchand received a nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Marie Charlet, but I found her work over-the-top, unconvincing, and, even, irritating.

Bottom-Line: Even with all of the flaws that I've mentioned, I don't want to discourage readers from taking a look at this film. The opening half-hour is five-star, taken by itself. In fact, I'd drive to the nearest city for a evening at a nightclub for a show like the one featured in the film's opening. The remainder of the film sinks down to a three-star rating, which makes a compromise rating of four-stars overall both fair and reasonable. The only extra offered by the MGM DVD is the theatrical trailer. Optional subtitles are provided in English, French, and Spanish.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older