There were moments when I was watching this in which I felt intensely interested, and moved. But there were too many "blah" moments for me to see it as a really good picture. It's a very loose biopic of the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Jose Ferrer), crippled in early life by an accident, shown as brilliant artist but a tragic, lonely drunk. Director John Huston and photographer Oswald Morris capture the atmosphere of 19th century Paris very well, with often gorgeous compositions. It also surprisingly captures the vulgarity of this life, with Colette Marchand's desperate, animal-like prostitute a standout. But Jose Ferrer's performance is so average that it ruins the picture. He just stands and delivers his lines in a monotone scene after scene. The relationship between Marchand and Ferrer, who so desperately wants love that it's killing him, is interesting but you can't help thinking that Ferrer is just a dumb sap, which kills the picture. And when a decent woman comes into his life later in the picture, he's too blind to see it! His obsession with Marchand just gets really irritating after a while, because her character is just not worth the trouble.
Review of Moulin Rouge
