Daily Archives: September 27, 2015

Moulin Rouge
Directed by John Huston
Written by Huston and Anthony Veiller from a novel by Pierre La Mure
1952/USA
Romulus Films Inc/Moulin Productions Inc.
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Prudish woman: You should be arrested. To hang such a thing on your wall! Look at this woman. She is undressing, with a man looking on! Disgusting!

Henri: Forgive me, madame, the lady is not undressing, she is dressing. The gentleman happens to be her husband. They are celebrating their twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. They are going to have dinner with their oldest son. He is a taxidermist. I am appalled that you should thus malign these good people. It goes to prove what I have always maintained, that evil exists only in the eye of the beholder. I will thank you to stop looking at my pictures.[/box]

This biopic of the short, sad life of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is amazing looking but not totally satisfying in some way.

Henri (Jose Ferrer) is born the heir to the ancient aristocratic title of the Count Alfonse de Toulouse-Lautrec (also played by Ferrer) and his gentle religious wife.  Father and mother are first cousins, the latest in a long line of traditional inbreeding.  Henri is born with a number of ailments but with an obvious talent in drawing that is prized by both father and mother.  When he is 13 he falls downstairs and fractures both legs.  The bones refuse to mend properly.  After a number of surgeries and other procedures the doctors conclude there is nothing to be done.  The legs will not grow thereafter.  This leaves Henri with the torso of a man and abnormally short legs.  Rejected by his childhood sweetheart, Henri decides to leave for Paris.

He develops a lifelong alcohol problem.  He spends all his evenings drinking and sketching in the bohemian Moulin Rouge, where can-can dancers and other performers scandalize the City.  Lautrec is a great favorite of both the management and the performers.

One day, Henri helps a prostitute, Marie Charlette (Colette Marchand) to escape arrest by the police.  She goes home with him and seems not to mind his deformity.  They have a very stormy relationship but she always comes back to the generous Henri.  After she breaks his heart, he eventually becomes a close friend and escort of Myriamme, a couture seamstress and admirer of his art.  This relationship comes to a sad end as well.  Henri basically drinks himself to death but leaves behind much beautiful art.  With Zsa Zsa Gabor as a famous singer.

Huston, who I don’t think of primarily as a visual filmmaker, really captures the color and texture of Lautrec’s most famous posters and paintings in this film.  I hope someday to see a restored print.  It must be breathtaking.  Anyone who has seen Ferrer as Cyrano de Bergerac will be able to imagine his performance here in a similarly sardonic, tragically romantic character.  Huston was also at least partially responsible for the script but I found it lacked the bite of his best work and dragged.  Worth seeing for the visuals, especially if you can find it in a better print than that currently available on YouTube.

Moulin Rouge won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color and Best Costume Design, Color.  It was nominated in the categories of:  Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Supporting Actress (Marchand); Best Director; and Best Film Editing.  I don’t see how this missed at least a nomination in the Best Cinematography category.

Trailer

Above and Beyond
Directed by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama
Written by Frank, Panama, and Beirne Lay Jr.; story by Lay
1952/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Amazon Instant

“The movie ‘Above and Beyond’ starring Robert Taylor didn’t get anything right, … ‘Above and Beyond’ script writers put the words, ‘Oh my God, what have we done?’ into my mouth,’ Tibbets said. ‘I never said that. Bob Lewis (the copilot) wrote ‘my God’ in his journal he was keeping on the flight. That’s how I remember it, anyway.’” — Paul Tibbets

This account of preparation to drop the first atomic bomb seems to have been pretty heavily fictionalized.  There’s also some propaganda.  Nevertheless, it’s quite watchable.

The story is told in flashback from the point of view of Lucey Tibbits (Eleanor Parker), who is nervously awaiting the return of her husband from a bombing mission to Japan.

Maj. Gen. Vernon Brent is looking for a good pilot to head the ultra-secret “Operation Silverplate” that will test the B-29 bomber which is slated to drop the atomic bomb.  He finds his man in Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets (Robert Taylor), who has just been denied promotion for questioning his commanding officer.  Tibbets is cleared within an inch of his life and posted to Wendover Field, Utah.  Tibbets is expect to keep strict discipline over his men, who are forbidden at the point of summary shooting to enter restricted areas without a pass.  Few know the actual purpose of the testing.  In all this, Tibbets is assisted, and closely watched, by Security Officer Maj. Bill Uanna (James Whitmore) the only other person who knows the details of the mission.

Uanna eventually decides that it is best to move all the wives of the men to Wendover, where they can be better controlled via confinement to the base.  He discourages Tibbets from bringing Lucey however.  The pregnant Lucey is thus left to give birth on her own in Washington.  Lucey has had very few days with her husband during their entire marriage. After the couple’s second son is born she insists on moving to Wendover.

When she gets there, she finds that the wives and men resent her husband mightily.  They figure their mission could not be anything very serious if it is headed by a mere lieutenant colonel like Tibbets and if the wives are being allowed on base.  They see Tibbets as overly heavy handed and self-important.  Lucey defends her husband and then begins to change her mind.  He refuses to tell her anything about what he does and keeps ordering her to stay out of his business.  The marriage is strained practically to the breaking point.

I don’t care much for Robert Taylor in his matinee idol persona, but I do like him when he plays a tough guy.  Here he is definitely a grim, overly controlled tough guy and is very good.  Eleanor Parker has the thankless role of asking many inane questions and refusing to accept anything at face value but she is good at it too.  We are reminded over and over that the bomb’s purpose is to end the war fast and avoid massive additional casualties on both sides but this is not too preachy or heavy handed.  It’s not a bad watch.

Above and Beyond was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Writing, Motion Picture Story and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Hugo Friedhofer).

Trailer