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As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

When the critic back in 1952 thought up the line "Monotony in Montmartre" to describe the movie, he couldn't resist using it. It's a smart line, but wide of the mark. John Huston's "Moulin Rouge", the story of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, deserves more respect than that.I have fond memories of this film. My father was an artist who was in charge of the 'front-of-house' display work for the film when it opened at Sydney's Regent Theatre in September 1953. Back then everything was painted and lettered by hand. My father who loved Lautrec's work was also commissioned to duplicate a number of his paintings as part of the promotion for the film. Although I was young at the time, experiences such as that may explain why I also became an artist.Nostalgia aside, more astute critics of the film noted that the film struggled to keep up the pace after the opening 20 minutes.So much leaps from the screen as Toulouse-Lautrec is introduced during an evening at the Moulin Rouge in 1890. He sits at a table doing sketches on the table cloth surrounded by frenetic can-can dancers, hair-pulling fights and acrobatic solo routines before a breathtaking Zsa Zsa Gabor descends a staircase to sing one of the most beautiful melodies ever written for the screen, "It's April Again". The whole thing is a kaleidoscope of colour, movement and sound inspired by Lautrec's posters; all this in the first 20 minutes!When the Moulin Rouge closes for the evening and Lautrec wanders on his crippled legs out into the dark Parisian night, the contrast is stunning, and that is exactly the effect I think Huston wanted to create, the Moulin Rouge was the spice of life for Lautrec; the outside world was harsh reality: loneliness, rejection and despair.No film about artists combines their story with their art as perfectly as this one does. The screen is filled with Lautrec's paintings and some of the settings for them are recreated. Huston obviously loved his subject's work and it is easy to see why. Lautrec captured life on the fly; his work had immediacy, no laboured slogs in the studio like many of the salon painters of his day.The film traces a number of his affairs. Jose Ferrer achieves an honesty here that is painful to watch, and he suffered with those strapped up legs. He projects the feeling that he is constantly on guard against rejection although he can't help being as obsessive about his love affairs as he is about his art.The script is full of insight and wit. I read Pierre La Mure's book years ago and I can't remember how much was sourced from there, but Huston was a brilliant writer, and I can see his touch in much of the dialogue.Huston was one of the great storytellers. I always ranked him just after John Ford. I haven't changed that opinion much over the years, and this film is one of the reasons why.

His was a rather short life. He was born in 1864 and died in 1901. But in the 37 years Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec helped change modern painting and advertising illustration, with a vivid but light line and an ability to capture movement. One of the best remembered Post-Impressionists, he managed to be the one to best illustrate the fin-de-siec age of Paris in the 1890s. While Monet and Van Gogh concentrated on the countryside, and Gaughin took his genius into the colors of the tropics, Toulouse-Lautrec concentrated on the theaters, dance halls (such as Moulin Rouge) and racetracks that the society of Paris frequented (the same society that would be shown in Vincent Minelli's GIGI six years after this film was made).It is hard to find a really dramatic story about most great artists. LUST FOR LIFE (dealing with Van Gogh) dealt with that artist's failure to find any responding human being to his affections and search for purity. It also dealt with his descent into madness and suicide. REMBRANDT followed the 17th Century master into his years when his artistic ability was misunderstood (after he did THE NIGHT WATCH) and he fell into financial difficulties. THE MOON AND SIX PENCE was Somerset Maugham's comment that Gaughin's brilliance as a painter did not mean he was a decent human being (his anglicized version - Strickland - uses people right and left in order to paint). THE NAKED MAJA showed Goya to be a man having to navigate his way through a corrupt royal court. THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY shows how a titan in art (Michaelangelo) painted his masterpiece (The Sistine Chapel) despite his personal war with an equally determined Pope Julius II.The story in MOULIN ROUGE is how Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had everything (talent, money, aristocratic position) but had nothing. For due to an accident in his teenage years, Henri fell down a stairs and broke his two legs. His parents were cousins, so genetically his bones could not knit properly: He became a dwarf. He could perform as well as a full grown man, but he looked the size of a top-heavy child complete with mustache and beard, and pince-nez eyeglasses. He could not attract women the normal way (we see his teenage female friend reject him when he offers himself to her). So he moves into the bohemian center of Paris, and starts painting. Unlike his fellow Post impressionists, Toulouse actually had money, so he never suffered for lack of rent or for no food or torn clothes (like Van Gogh and Gaughin occasionally did). But his loneliness, and apparent helplessness led to his becoming an alcoholic, in particular of the then popular but dangerous drink absinthe.The subject matter of this film happened to get the right director. John Huston was usually seen as dealing with grittier and more adventuresome material (like THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRES). But Huston actually was very interested in art, and his use of color and casting is almost flawless here, choosing supporting players who literally look like Toulouse' poster drawings of them dancing the "can can" and other popular dances of the day. So is the choice of Jose Ferrer as Toulouse. Although the dwarf was half Ferrer's height, special braces were used to enable Ferrer to walk "normally" like his real life counterpart. It must have been painful but Ferrer never bats an eyelash.Ferrer's turmoil deals with the women in his life. He is known to the cast of dancers and singers at Moulin Rouge (led by Zsa Zsz Gabor as the resident chanteuse, who sings the theme song of the film, "Where Is Your Heart"). We see him meet a prostitute, who briefly lives with him, but cannot live with him or without him (she sees he is a good, kind man who can provide for her, but he is a dwarf). They split up twice in the film (he seeks her out and finds her in a more natural milieu in the gutter). This almost breaks him but he recovers, and his most creative years follow. Then he meets a more acceptable woman (Suzanne Flon) whose genuine friendship and affection he fails to recognize until it is too late. Ferrer also played the artist's father, a man who fails to realize just what an amazing son he produced.It was a first rate production and Ferrer got another nomination for best actor. It remains a good biography of a great artist, and one that is as pleasing to the eye as LUST FOR LIFE. It would not be amiss if both films were shown in tandem by some film society or other.

With the proficiency of filmmakers with Technicolor getting ever greater, there was a series of features in the 1950s about painting which mimicked a painterly look through their cinematography and composition. This biopic of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec achieves some of the best results to that end, not surprisingly as it is the result of a collaboration between director John Huston, himself a painter, and noted "specialist" cinematographer Oswald Morris, who went on to win an Oscar for his work here.The opening twenty minutes of Moulin Rouge is absolutely stunning. We open with a lengthy dance sequence at the eponymous club, a highly stylised and rhythmic scene almost like something out of a musical. Huston and Morris' aim here was to create something that looked like a Lautrec painting come to life. The light is misty, the backgrounds an indistinct blur while the foreground is dominated by bold splashes of colour. The result is absolutely captivating, embodying the atmosphere of fin-de-siecle Paris and Lautrec's world with dreamy nostalgia.Sadly, the film never gets back to these dizzy heights. The image and tone – that painting-come-to-life factor – is often good but never quite so great as at the beginning. Later on there is a very choppy montage of Lautrec's paintings, which doesn't really show his work off to the best effect. Another big problems I think is that, while Huston could compose a great shot, he was not the best director of actors. Jose Ferrer had a lot of talent but he often seems wooden here. Some of the smaller performances are just a little too melodramatic, and others are too dull. I also think it was a mistake casting Ferrer as his father as well. In the scene where Lautrec senior confronts his son in Paris, I can imagine that Huston would have wanted to keep them in separate shots anyway to emphasise the lack of warmth between them, but as it is it looks too obvious and artificial.Story-wise, this is a pretty good attempt at showing a three-dimensional view of a life story. Behind the vivid, dynamic paintings Moulin Rouge reveals an insecure, self-deprecating artist, utterly assured of his own talent but thinking himself worthless in every other respect. It's a wholly miserable tale which is really quite suited to John Huston, who spent most of this period making film-noirs. It's also perhaps Huston's most personal film, as apparently at one point he planned to make a documentary on French painters.Comparisons are inevitable between Moulin Rouge and Lust for Life, Vincente Minnelli's 1956 biopic of Vincent van Gogh. Both recreate the style of their subject through cinematography and colour composition, and both were made by directors who were also painters. It's interesting though that while both Lautrec and Van Gogh were depressive individuals who lead pretty tragic lives, Moulin Rouge is overall pessimistic in tone, whereas Lust for Life leaves you feeling uplifted and positive. The difference is that Huston was perhaps one of the most cynical directors ever, while Minnelli was much more the romantic.Huston was a master at showing us grimness and despair, but not so great at poignancy, which is why Moulin Rouge will leave you feeling down but is unlikely to bring on tears. However, visually this is Huston's most beautiful picture and strangely it is this which gives Moulin Rouge a bittersweet tinge. This is one case where style over substance really pays off. Moulin Rouge has lots of little flaws but as a whole it is often enthralling and certainly memorable.

My wife and I were able to tolerate about 45 minutes of this terrible movie. I just don't see how anyone could possibly think Jose Ferrer did a great acting job in this. I've seen better acting from Charlie McCarthy -- to say Ferrer was wooden in this is an understatement. The out-of-synch-lipping scene with Zsa Zsa was hilarious. Not as bad as a dubbed Japanese 1950's sci-fi film, but it came close. Suzanne Flon's performance was in sharp contrast to Ferrer's dull, disengaged portrayal. Her scenery-chewing portrayal of Myriamme was positively painful to watch. Take a pass on this Huston effort and do something rewarding with the time you save -- play with your kids, take a walk, or read a book about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Remember, you can't unwatch this. I wish I could.