“Loneliness, Ugliness, and the Pain in my Legs”

I stumbled across a canvas showered with lime and burnt orange. In its middle ground there is a dancing figure. The strokes of wet paint are shrilling with the sounds of a cheap music hall. In the foreground of the film shot there is painter with spectacles, an unlit beard, and a worn face. Two minutes later, the painter is lying down. His short legs cannot reach the post of the day bed. “Oh my God,” I shout, “IT’S LAUTREC!”

John Houston is famous for his gritty American films starring most notably Humphrey Bogart: The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Key Largo. I was astonished to learn that he directed a film set in a late 19^th century Paris. Furthermore, it is a film about the out casted painter and consorter of Parisian nightlife, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Haven’t you ever wondered why the 2001 film Moulin Rouge! has a pointless exclamation point? It is because of the above mentioned 1952 film, Moulin Rouge.

Biographical pictures from the Studio System Age were largely romanticized and controversy-filtered. One such example is the 1946 film Night and Day about Cole Porter. Now, Mouline Rouge is a fictionalized account of Lautrec’s life because it was released to a largely conservative and Hays Code familiar. However, the unique internationality of the cast and production team and the progressive cinematography style grasps the fundamentals of Lautrec's legacy. Of course, there is John Houston’s well-known grittiness. In addition, the actresses in the film are French and their articulations of ‘Henri’ are all the more richening. Although José Ferrer, who portrays Lautrec, is Puerto Rican, his exoticism also contributes to the loud tones of Moulin Rouge. The film’s British cinematographer, Oswald Morriss, uses warm impressionistic techniques (which earned him an Academy Award â) that bring to mind the work of fellow Briton Jack Cardiff in The Red Shoes. There is a mildly crude depiction of the Moulin Rouge and of Lautrec’s alcohol addiction but there is no explicit sexuality, which in an accurate illustration of Lautrec’s life would be necessary. However, as always in art there is a reason for everything.

In my AP Art History class, we learned about Lautrec and how in paintings of his like At the Moulin Rouge (1892-95), he exaggerates the elements. There is glaring artificial light and masklike faces along the oblique plane and strong line patterns. By simplifying the elements, Lautrec distorted them even more. That is exactly what the creative team of Houston’s Moulin Rouge did. They simplified his character into a lonely, ugly alcoholic with pain in his legs. And this distortion makes his life and work all the more fascinating.