--- title: "Moulin Rouge" year: 1952 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/moulin-rouge-1952" fi1m_score: 64 critics_score: 65 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-20T02:34:20.436031+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T02:34:54.692868+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Moulin Rouge (1952) Directed by John Huston · 1h 59m · MPA NR · Drama **Fi1m score: 64** · Critics 65 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* A Toulouse-Lautrec poster comes to life for twenty minutes, then remembers it is a biopic > John Huston’s Toulouse-Lautrec picture opens with twenty minutes of colour and movement as exciting as anything he made, then settles into a solemn, sorrowing artist biopic. José Ferrer is dignified and the Moulin Rouge is a marvel; the script is neither. ## Synopsis Montmartre, 1890. At the Moulin Rouge the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (José Ferrer) sits at his corner table with a cognac, sketching the floor: Louise Weber (Katherine Kath), known as La Goulue, and Valentin le Desossé (Walter Crisham) doing the can-can, Jane Avril (Zsa Zsa Gabor) singing to the crowd, the proprietor Charles Zidler (Harold Kasket) keeping order. Henri’s legs stopped growing after a childhood fall on his family’s estate, and he has left his mother, the Countess (Claude Nollier), to live and paint among the dancers and drinkers of the hill. Walking home after closing he meets Marie Charlet (Colette Marchand), a streetwalker running from a policeman, and lets her stay in his studio. He wants to be looked at as a man rather than pitied; she wants a roof. ## Review John Huston wanted to put Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris on screen in the colours of Toulouse-Lautrec’s own posters, and for the first twenty minutes of *Moulin Rouge* he does exactly that. Then the dancing stops, the painter goes home and the film becomes a biopic of the tormented-artist kind, adapted by Huston and Anthony Veiller from Pierre La Mure’s novel, in which a gifted, unhappy man is told what he is by everyone he meets. It is worth seeing for the opening and for José Ferrer. It is a long evening otherwise. The opening is something. Oswald Morris shoots the Moulin Rouge through a haze of smoke and coloured filters, so that the whites go to chalk and the reds sit flat, like ink on paper rather than light on skin. Louise Weber (Katherine Kath), the dancer known as La Goulue, and Valentin le Desossé (Walter Crisham) take the floor, and Ralph Kemplen cuts on the kicks, so the whole hall seems to jump each time a petticoat goes up. Charles Zidler (Harold Kasket) works the tables, Jane Avril (Zsa Zsa Gabor) sings to the crowd, and at his corner table Lautrec draws it all with a cognac at his elbow. Georges Auric’s waltz comes in under her and stays in the head for a week. We sat up straight, which we do not often do for a film of this age, and we stayed sat up until the lights went down on an empty floor. Ferrer plays Lautrec on his knees, with his lower legs strapped up behind him, and the walk he gets out of it, a quick stiff rock with the cane doing half the work, is the film’s second great effect. He gives the man a dry tongue, a bowler and a way of looking at a woman as if he were already regretting the drawing. It is a dignified performance and a lonely one, and the writing undercuts it. The script hands him speeches about art and solitude at roughly ten-minute intervals, and Ferrer delivers them as though reading them off the canvas, because there is no other way to say them. The women are the story, and the film treats them as three panels. Colette Marchand’s Marie Charlet, the streetwalker he takes in on the way home from the club, is the one who lives. She is quick and hard, she treats his rooms as a lodging and him as the wallet attached to it, and Marchand plays every kindness as something Marie is about to charge for. Their scenes have a nastiness the rest of the film cannot manage, and we winced at them, properly, more than once. Gabor’s Jane Avril is used as a poster that moves, sweeping in to be affectionately rude and sweeping out again, and that is the right use for her. Suzanne Flon’s Myriamme Hayam, the grown-up of the piece, arrives in the second half, by which time the film has slowed to the pace of a sitting. Every time the picture leaves the dance floor for a drawing room the temperature drops. A childhood flashback with Claude Nollier as his mother, the Countess, explains the legs and the sadness in one go, as if we needed telling. Marcel Vertès’s sets and costumes, with Schiaparelli sharing the dressmaking credit, are still handsome in these stretches, all red plush and gaslight, but they are handsome the way a museum is handsome. Nobody in them is in a hurry, and Kemplen, who cut the can-can like a man possessed, cuts the conversations as though paid by the minute. Huston is at his best with people doing things: prospectors digging in [*The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*](https://film.one/film/the-treasure-of-the-sierra-madre) (1948), a gang planning a job in *The Asphalt Jungle* (1950). *Moulin Rouge* is about a man watching, and Huston does not seem to know what to do with him once the show is over. The colour does its job all the way through. The man in front of it is asked to be sad for a hundred minutes and given almost nothing else to do. See it, then, for the first reel with the sound up, and for Ferrer and Marchand. It runs 119 minutes, and if you find your attention going somewhere around the hour mark you can console yourself that the best of it is already safely behind you. *Fi1m score 64, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (5) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, THR Staff (80/100, inferred): The review praises the film as a distinguished artistic production and a tender tribute to Toulouse-Lautrec and late-19th-century Paris. It singles out the flawless direction by John Huston, superb performances, and the rare beauty of the Technicolor photography. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/moulin-rouge-review-1952-movie-1171397/) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (80/100, inferred): The review praises the film as one of the most felicitous movies for its stunning color illustrations and patterned compositions of bohemian Paris. It highlights the exquisite visual stimulation and emotional flow keyed to the story of Toulouse-Lautrec. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1953/02/11/archives/moulin-rouge-is-directed-by-john-huston-and-stars-jose-ferrer-at.html) - **The New Yorker**, John McCarten (70/100, inferred): The critic finds John Huston has produced a movie of considerable merit in his attempt to capture Toulouse-Lautrec's life and times, though not entirely successful. The vivid recreation of Montmartre and especially the innovative color work stand out as highlights. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1953/02/21/period-piece-by-huston) - **Empire**, William Thomas (60/100, inferred): The film is a sad story of the disabled artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's life and his time at the Moulin Rouge. Huston approximates the style of Lautrec's posters with strong art direction, costuming and music, though the film feels dated. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/moulin-rouge-2-review/) - **Time Out**, TM (35/100, inferred): The critic finds it a lumpish and historically unconvincing biopic that follows the cliché of the tormented artist. The first reel stands out for its vivid evocation of 1890s Paris through colour and movement, aided by strong production design and cinematography. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/moulin-rouge-2) ## Details - **Director:** John Huston - **Director:** John Huston - **Screenplay:** John Huston, Anthony Veiller - **Novel:** Pierre La Mure - **Cinematography:** Oswald Morris - **Editor:** Ralph Kemplen - **Music:** Georges Auric - **Production design:** Marcel Vertès - **Costume design:** Schiaparelli, Marcel Vertès - **Producer:** John Huston - **Cast:** José Ferrer as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Zsa Zsa Gabor as Jane Avril; Colette Marchand as Marie Charlet; Suzanne Flon as Myriamme Hayam; Claude Nollier as Countess de Toulouse-Lautrec; Katherine Kath as Louise Weber; Muriel Smith as Aicha; Mary Clare as Madame Loubet - **Runtime:** 1h 59m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 23 December 1952 - **Genres:** Drama - **Budget:** $2 million ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, BE, BG, CA, CZ, DK, EE, FI, FR, GR, HR, HU, IS, IT, LT, NL, NO, PT, RO, SE, SI, SK, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1953: Best Actor (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Art Direction, Color (won); Best Costume Design, Color (won) ## If you liked this - *French Cancan* (1955): Renoir on the same dance floor, made by a man who liked people - *Lust for Life* (1956): Minnelli’s Van Gogh; the same colour ambition with a hotter performance at its centre - *Moulin Rouge!* (2001), Fi1m 75: Luhrmann keeps the club and the consumption and throws out the solemnity — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/moulin-rouge.md) - *Mr. Turner* (2014): A painter’s life told through grunts and weather rather than speeches about art - *Camille Claudel* (1988): Adjani as a sculptor undone by love and Paris, with the misery earned --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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