Moulin Rouge

Rating: 10/10 (22 October 2017)

Moulin Rouge is a tour de force of artifice, a dazzling pastiche of musical and visual elements at the service of a blatantly artificial story. Lumpish biopic, historically laughable as it pursues Hollywood's perennial view of the artist as solitary and star-crossed in both life and love. What taste can do, Huston does, abetted by Paul Sheriff's set designs and some fine colour camera-work from Oswald Morris. But playing Toulouse Lautrec on his knees, Ferrer could equally well be begging for mercy from the script. Best bit is the first reel, which evokes the spirit of Paris in the Naughty Nineties in a swirling mass of colour and movement.