Movie Maven

Moulin Rouge (1952)
Starring: Jose Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Suzanne Flon, Colette Marchand
Written and directed by: John Huston

(Photo courtesy of shutterfly.com)

On the surface it looked perfect: the original Moulin Rouge (the inspiration for Baz Luhrmann's vibrant adaptation,) fantastic character actor Jose Ferrer, the divine Zsa Zsa, and directed by none other than John Huston, previously of The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen, both essentials of classic cinema. It's the perfect combination, no?

NO.

This... this thing betrayed me! The first scene in the famed Paris nightclub lures one into a false sense of security. The place is dirty and the capering girls are loose and obnoxious with bad teeth. Ah, I thought to myself, this is Paris in the nineteenth century: brash, luridly glamorous, petticoats a-flying and legs akimbo. The painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Ferrer) sits at a table in the club, downing a bottle of cognac and drawing sketches of the dancing girls right on the tablecloth. He throws out zingers and one-liners, one after the other, like finely tuned right hooks; he is bitter and drunk. He is fabulous.

Then Zsa Zsa comes out and starts singing and the whole thing goes down the tubes.

Perhaps it was my fault. Perhaps I was spoiled from enjoying this experience by Luhrman, Nicole Kidman and her fiery rendition of "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," and a far jollier version of Toulouse by John Leguizamo. But when Gabor came out in a bizarre plumed hat (see above) singing about "Flowers in April," as the so-called star of the Moulin Rouge, I got a slow sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The movie just gets wierder from here. We are offered a lengthy flashback which recounts the reason for Toulouse's bitterness: he was injured in childhood when he fell down a flight of stairs. Or, as the movie would have you believe, launching himself down the stairs in a sad attempt to make it look like an accident. Whatever happened, the bones in his legs didn't knit, stunting his growth. His girlfriend leaves him because he's a cripple, his father laughs derisively at his childhood sketches, blah blah blah. Fast-forward to the present, and Toulouse enters into two tumultuous relationships- one with a street girl, Marie (Colette Marchand,) and another with a mature woman named Mryianne (Suzanne Flon.) He struggles to balance his art, his relationships, his family name, and his increasing descent into alcohol.

Ferrer becomes increasingly irritating through all of this, and his snappy delivery becomes more and more monotonous. Ok, we get it, you're angry and bitter at life! I would comment on Marchand's performance, except I couldn't understand a word she was saying. The editing was laughable, the music was grating, the plot becomes more and more useless and almost bored with itself... I could go on and on.

While I was doing a little research here and there, I found a most disturbing tidbit of information: this movie was nominated for an Academy Award- several in fact. And it won for Best Costumes and Best Art Direction. It was also nominated for Best Picture and and Marchand got a nod for Best Supporting Actress. One of the worst movies I had seen in a long time, and it got nominated for Best Picture. There is no justice in the world.

It might have been all right if the movie was amusingly bad (see prior post on Snakes on a Plane) but it's just dull, dry, and uninspiring. Perhaps it's not entirely the movie's fault- it would be hard to impress someone who's seen Luhrmann's adaptation, and even harder to beat Leguizamo's lovely performance. But whoever's fault it is, there's no excuse for that kind of betrayal.