Jean Renoir made his tribute to the Moulin Rouge with Jean Gabin and called it French Can-Can; I believe a DVD of that show is on its way from Criterion later in the year. John Huston's movie uses the nightclub as background for the famous painter who popularized it. Painter Toulouse-Lautrec moves in fine social circles and creates works of beauty, but is himself cursed with a physical deformity.

Hollywood biographies tended to be highly suspect, as writers frequently made up stories for the sake of drama, sanitizing everyone from politicians to scientists. There had been quite a few bios of composers, which were often pure fantasy, but few about painters. The Moon and Sixpence comes to mind. Huston wisely makes Moulin Rouge about the wild times in the Montmartre as much as it is about his painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Better yet, the film touches upon the artist's career but is not a series of triumphs. Henri suffers as his work becomes more widely known, and the film ends in a weird mix of bittersweet failure. Here the critics should have found the "Huston thread," for Moulin Rouge ends as many of the director's pictures do, with the hero's hopes foiled but his spirit unbroken.

Just looking at Moulin Rouge is reason enough to make special plans to see it. Oswald Morris' cinematography is overpowering. It's perhaps not as intoxicated with its own effects as Jack Cardiff's sometime is, but the images dazzle just the same. This is the first film where Huston used his weight to push some progressive ideas through Technicolor London. Moulin Rouge looks to have been shot with heavy diffusion and special lighting in the dance scenes to emulate Toulouse-Lautrec's canvasses and by and large it's successful - the film has a unique "painterly" look that connects the artist to the audience in the same way as last year's Girl With a Pearl Earring. Huston's movie is also in much better control of its storytelling, as compared to the more highly regarded Vincente Minnelli biopic Lust for Life, with its strained theatrics and overplaying by Kirk Douglas.

In a way Moulin Rouge is first a vehicle for José Ferrer, the kind of elitist toast-of-the-town actor that wide audiences tend to abandon after a while. He charmed everyone in Cyrano de Bergerac but later on had a hard time as a lead and eventually became sort of a permanent special guest star. This is his celebrated 'stunt' role, the one where the camera is carefully placed to give him the illusion of having tiny legs. The illusion isn't that impressive any more, and we accept Henri for what he has mainly because of Ferrer's acting. Ferrer is witty, droll, haughty and remote, all the while conveying a need for other people and for love. It's fine work and has more subtlety than one might think. Here's a fellow who allows one woman to abuse him and then callously rejects another to protect his feelings. Ferrer makes him into a tragic case with a massive talent. Henri never loses faith in his art and is given the sweet satisfaction of hearing his father - a remote man who earlier called his work pornographic - read aloud the telegram that says his work is to hang in the Louvre. Ferrer plays the father as well; we're so distracted by the tricks to make Lautrec fils seem a cripple, that we never notice the methods used to put Lautrec pere in the same frame with him.

As Henri's brazen tormentor Marie Charlet, Colette Marchand was given a sizeable publicity build-up but only made a few more features. She was a dancer primarily, but she doesn't dance here. Charlet is tough customer to understand but Henri gives her every benefit of the doubt; Huston charitably refuses to paint her with a black heart. Suzanne Flon has a more controlled character to play; her Myriamme Hayam approaches Henri with great caution. Carefully staying out of the controlling influence of men has served Myriamme well, so well that the correct signals between them don't happen until it's too late - she's reserved, and he stays cynically aloof. Ms. Flon became a favorite of Orson Welles and appeared in Mr. Arkadin and The Trial as well as The Train and Monsieur Klein.

Huston has recreated the famous dancers in Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings and given them amusingly vain personalities. La Gouloue (Katherine Kath) and Aicha (Muriel Smith) fight like cats and dogs. Ms. Smith dubbed the singing voice for Bloody Mary in the film version of South Pacific. Valentin Dessousse (Walter Grisham) is the spindly-thin dancer with the top hat and long chin. It looks artifical here, and I've wondered if it was supposed to be an artificial stage appliance, either for effect or perhaps to cover up a war wound. Such things were common later, after WW1. The final dancer is good old Tutte Lemkow, the toothy short fellow with the goatee who provided choreography and appeared in many films like Bonjour Tristesse. He also arranged the bal masque in The Fearless Vampire Killers (rumored for release in the near future from Warners).

Around the periphery are a number of faces that grab our attention. Actress Jill Bennett (Brittania Hospital, Julius Caesar, The Charge of the Light Brigade) dresses up the bar with her striking face. Diane Cilento is said to be in there somewhere; George Pastell (From Russia with Love, The Mummy) is a sullen man in another bar.

Finally there's the first "unpaired" pairing of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing! Lee has one scene as Georges Seurat (the painter subject of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George) but gets no on-screen credit. Cushing's part is only a tiny bit bigger, but he gets to strut and preen for a few moments as Myriamme's fancy-man suitor. Cushing is perfect, and so young his cheekbones don't look hollow yet. He must have been impressed with himself in huge Technicolor closeup, and thought, "Hmm, if only I could talk Hammer into using me and color in the same picture ..."

MGM's DVD of Moulin Rouge is a great disc. Everyone will want to know about the color - has it been tuned to the original look of the film or rethought afresh by new eyes that don't know about Oswald Morris' color experiments? I haven't seen original prints so I can't say, but this looks extremely pleasing to me, very soft-hued in the nightclub scenes. The picture is clean, detailed and rock-solid, one of those films where every third shot looks like it should be hanging in a museum.

The audio is almost as good. I'd say the same element that seemed slightly distorted and 'crunchy' on the earlier laserdisc (now a discardable relic) has been given a very careful audio going-over. It's brighter and more robust than ever.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Moulin Rouge rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Very Good
Supplements: trailer
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: June 11, 2004