Moulin Rouge

I watched the Grapevine video edition of Moulin Rouge, and their old tapes are not particularly known for excellent video transfers or scores. However after about the first 15 minutes, in which we are treated to some rather frenzied nightlife location shots in Paris, the main characters are finally introduced and the action quickly gets steamy, thanks in no small part to the chemistry between Olga Tschechowa and the male lead, Jean Bradin, which is immediate and compelling.

The story involves a love triangle between mother - daughter - prospective son-in-law. The daughter (Eve Gray) never seems to realize that her fiancée has the hots for her own mother. The audience keeps waiting for the light bulb to go off in her head, but she just charges ahead, completely trusting in her mother and young lover, with dangerous consequences.

Olga Tschechowa (a paramour of Adolph Hitler) struck me very much as almost a carbon copy in looks and acting mannerisms to Pola Negri. In fact I kept visualizing Pola in this role as a I watched Olga. Olga was just as good an actress as Pola; every scene she is in your eye gravitates to her first. Effective use of close-ups and intelligent discourse between the characters, reflected in the title cards, adds to the pleasure of this sultry concoction. If you are into romantic foreign silent films this version of Moulin Rouge will prove enjoyable to you.

It is many years since I had watched my video of this film so I played it this afternoon.Directed by DuPont in his British period.He is most known here for the ludicrous pauses in the dialogue of Atlantic.I would certainly agree with one of the reviewers who commented on the totally daft plot.After all why would a mother want a daughter to marry a man who was lusting after her.So far as the cinematography is concerned,this brings into focus the strange face makeup of the actors.Their upper eyelids are darkened and their eyebrows marked in very boldly.Is this part of the expressionist style or is it because of problems with the film stock used ?

"Moulin Rouge" is the sort of film you simply must accept for what it is--a modestly entertaining but silly film. It has the sort of plot that seems rather old fashioned and filled with holes.

When the film begins, a famous stage actress from the famed Moulin Rouge is thrilled to have a visit from her daughter. It seems the young lady is planning on getting married and the mother is happy for the couple. However, later when the mother is alone with the girl's fiancé, he suddenly declares his love for the mother! Weird, I know...and where all this goes is a bit far-fetched. It is exciting but kind of silly.

This film brings up lots of problems: why didn't the mother tell her daughter that the boyfriend was a creepy guy and why did the nightclub look NOTHING like anything from the Moulin Rouge (after all, everyone here had lots of clothes)? And, for that matter, why a black-face number?! It all is kind of silly (and a tad offensive) but did have really nice camera-work.

E. A. Dupont (1891-1956) was one of the top directors during Germany's Weimar years (1919-1933). Two of his noteworthy films of that era were THE ANCIENT LAW (1923) about the son of a Rabbi who becomes an actor and is shunned by his father (which became the basis for THE JAZZ SINGER four years later) and VARIETY (1925) which features a trapeze artist (Emil Jannings) whose female protege' betrays him. Dupont's success and reputation led to offers outside of Germany, and following a quick trip to Hollywood, he went to England and made two classic silents just before the arrival of sound. These were MOULIN ROUGE (1928), and PICCADILLY (1929) which starred Anna May Wong. Both were commercial successes and Dupont's future looked bright, however the sound era proved to be his undoing.

Dupont's trademark during the Silent Era was his fluid cinematography. His camera seemed capable of going anywhere and doing anything. The look of his films expanded the vocabulary of silent cinema and the movies mentioned above were showcases for his mobile camera. This style of cinematography was impossible after the addition of sound, with the earliest talkies forced to stop dead in their tracks for the dialogue sequences. The visual storytelling aspect of Dupont's movie making was lost forever and he wound up becoming simply another director for hire in increasingly lesser quality movies like PROBLEM GIRLS until he reached his nadir with the low budget science fiction opus, THE NEANDERTHAL MAN (1953). By this time he was a heavy drinker and had made only two movies in 14 years. He died 3 years later in 1956.

Thanks to the new restoration techniques and old movie rediscoveries of the 21st century silent film renaissance, Dupont is back in the limelight. Although MOULIN ROUGE (the first of 4 major movies to use that title) was released as a silent in 1928, it was refitted with music and sound effects and re-released in 1929. The addition of music and sound didn't affect the look of the movie and it remains a remarkable time capsule of late 1920's entertainments and fashions. The melodramatic storyline has the fiance of the daughter of cabaret headliner falling in love with her mother which leads to serious complications and potential tragedy. The last reel is a textbook example of maximum impact editing and is as visually exciting today as it was 100 years ago.

The lead performance by German-Russian actress Olga Cherkova dominates the film along with her cabaret routines. Eve Gray is fine as the daughter but French actor Jean Bradin as the boyfriend is bland. The original silent version of MOULIN ROUGE apparently does not exist so this restoration is based on the re-fitted 1929 sound edition. The picture quality is quite good as is the cleaned up sound but the movie has an occasional sped-up quality typical of silent films which had a soundtrack added. Network, the British company who specializes in 1950s and early 60s TV shows like ROBIN HOOD, did a fine job here and deserve credit for resurrecting this forgotten classic which showcases Dupont at the top of his game...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Ewald Dupont's final silent effort is one of his best combining firmly controlled direction and editing, highly stylized and innovative camerawork by Werner Brandes, along with a magnificent performance by the female lead, the great German actress Olga Tschechowa. Filmed in part at the Lido De Paris during an international review, the film is valuable to any who are deeply interested in social and cultural history as the Parisian scenes are fascinating and blend seamlessly with the scenario, which relates of a young French nobleman's erotic fascination for an actress, the mother of his betrothed. Although the plot is essentially melodrama, we are never far from the perception of reality, as Dupont does not permit whim to his actors, with the result that each glance and movement, if edited away, would reduce the effect of the story's progression. Cinematographer Brandes makes correct use of the Stanislavsky trained Tschechowa's striking features, since she is the linchpin of the film's considerable energy, although even the small roles in MOULIN ROUGE are handled in more than creditable fashion.