In 1890 Paris, crowds gather at the Moulin Rouge as artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec finishes a bottle of cognac while sketching the dancers. Regular patrons arrive: singer Jane Avril teases Henri, dancers La Goulue and Aicha argue, and owner Maurice Joyant offers Henri free drinks for a promotional poster. After closing, Henri reveals his 4-foot-6-inch (137 cm) stature. A flashback shows that, as a child, he injured his legs in a fall, which never healed due to a genetic disorder from his parents being first cousins.
On his way home to Montmartre, Henri helps streetwalker Marie Charlet escape the police. Impressed by her lack of judgment about his disability, Henri allows her to stay with him. He soon realizes poverty has made her both harsh and free from societal hypocrisy. After a night out, she insults a portrait he painted of her, and he throws her out, sinking into alcoholism. His landlady contacts his mother, who urges him to find Marie to lift his spirits. Henri finds her drunk in a café, where she admits she stayed with him only to save money for her boyfriend, who has now left her. Depressed, Henri returns home and contemplates suicide but finds sudden inspiration to complete the Moulin Rouge poster. Surviving his crisis, he arranges for Marie to receive money for a new life.
Henri delivers the poster to Maurice, who accepts it despite its unconventional style. His success grows, but one of his risqué portraits leads his father to denounce his work. Henri continues depicting Parisian nightlife, gaining fame but few friends. One day, he meets a young woman, Myriamme, on the Pont Alexandre III, seemingly about to jump into the Seine. She assures him she is not suicidal and throws a key into the river. Later, while shopping with Jane Avril, Henri recognizes Myriamme modeling gowns. A friend of Jane's, she lives independently. Henri is surprised when Myriamme reveals she bought his portrait of Marie at a flea market. The key Myriamme discarded belonged to a suitor, Marcel de la Voisier, who wanted her as a lover but refused to marry her. Though cynical about love, Henri begins to fall in love with her.
One evening, Henri and Myriamme encounter La Goulue, now a washed-up, drunken figure, and Henri realizes the Moulin Rouge has become respectable. Myriamme informs Henri that Marcel has proposed. Henri bitterly congratulates her. When she asks if he loves her, Henri lies and says he does not, believing she is toying with his feelings. The next day, Henri receives a letter from Myriamme, confessing her love and that his bitterness has ruined their chance at happiness. He rushes to her apartment, but she has already left.
A year later, Henri, now an alcoholic, is found drunk in a dive bar, still obsessed with Myriamme's letter. Taken home, he suffers from delirium tremens and hallucinates cockroaches. While trying to fend them off, he falls down the stairs. Taken to his family's chateau, his condition worsens. On his deathbed, Henri's father informs him he will be the first living artist to be exhibited in the Louvre and begs for forgiveness. In his final moments, Henri envisions figures from his Moulin Rouge paintings dancing around his room.
In the film, José Ferrer portrays both Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his father, the Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec. To transform Ferrer into Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, various techniques were employed, including the use of platforms, concealed pits, special camera angles, makeup, and costumes. Short body doubles were also utilized. Ferrer designed and used a set of knee pads that allowed him to walk on his knees, simulating Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's distinctly shorter stature. Ferrer received significant praise not only for his performance but also for his willingness to have his legs strapped in this manner for the role.
It was reported that John Huston asked cinematographer Oswald Morris to render the color scheme of the film to look "as if Toulouse-Lautrec had directed it".[3]Moulin Rouge was shot in three-strip Technicolor. The Technicolor projection print is created by dye transfer from three primary-color gelatin matrices. This permits great flexibility in controlling the density, contrast, and saturation of the print. Huston asked Technicolor for a subdued palette, rather than the sometimes-gaudy colors "glorious Technicolor" was famous for. Technicolor was reportedly reluctant to do this.
The budget was £434,264 plus $160,000 to cover the fees of John Huston, José Ferrer and Zsa Zsa Gabor.[4]
Reception
Critical
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This long and pretentious film is, like Pierre La Mure's book, not an accurate biography of Lautrec, but an attempt to evoke the kind of man he was and to paint a vivid fresco of his period and background. ...The dialogue, with its attempts at smart and worldly wise aphorisms, the deadly even pace and unrelenting detachment add up only to two hours of innate boredom, relieved from time to time by some striking effects of colour. The sets, costumes and photography are, indeed, on a much higher level than the rest; there are moments when the surface achieves a fine visual approximation of Lautrec's Paris, and as a result of which the vulgarity of the treatment appears all the more discordant. The acting is chiefly remarkable for a constant babel of foreign accents, among which the most extraordinary are Zsa Zsa Gabor's high-pitched Viennese exclamations."[5]
Box office
During its first year of release it earned £205,453 in UK cinemas[6] and grossed $9 million at the North American box office.[2]
Ferrer received 40 per cent of the proceeds from the film as well as other rights. This remuneration gave rise to a prominent U.S. Second Circuit tax case, Commissioner v. Ferrer (1962), in which Ferrer argued that he was taxed too much.[8]
The film was not nominated for its color cinematography, which many critics[who?] found remarkable. Leonard Maltin, in his annual Movie and Video Guide declared: "If you can't catch this in color, skip it."[citation needed]
In an interview shortly after his successful film version of Cabaret opened, Bob Fosse acknowledged John Huston's filming of the can-can in Moulin Rouge as being very influential on his own film style.[citation needed]
