| ‘French Cancan’ is a delicious musical comedy that deserves comparison with the golden age Hollywood musicals of the same period. Essentially it's a ‘let’s put on a show’ type scenario…in this case inspired by the origins of the famous Montmartre cabaret ‘Moulin Rouge’ and the backstage characters who inhabit the ‘Chinese Screen’ theatre. |
Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining. "Grand Illusion" and "Rules of the Game" are routinely included on lists of the greatest films – he made his best films in the 1930s poetic realism period.
In the 1950s he returned to France to make a remarkable trilogy which were all in Technicolor and all musical comedies: ‘The Golden Coach’ (1955), named by Andrew Sarris as the greatest film ever made; ‘French Cancan’, and ‘Elena and Her Men’ (1956). The three 1950s musical comedies are often described as Renoir's ‘art trilogy’, and this one is most single-mindedly dedicated to the bond between performer and audience.
‘French Cancan’ is a delicious musical comedy that deserves comparison with the golden age Hollywood musicals of the same period. Essentially it's a ‘let’s put on a show’ type scenario…in this case inspired by the origins of the famous Montmartre cabaret ‘Moulin Rouge’ and the backstage characters who inhabit the ‘Chinese Screen’ theatre.
Jean Gabin, perhaps the greatest of leading men – in his fourth collaboration with Renoir – [‘The Lower Depths’ (1936), ‘Grand Illusion’ (1937) and ‘Le Bête Humaine’ (1938)] plays a man who makes no pretense and no faithfulness to anyone and makes it clear that his only loyalty is to the stage.
‘French Cancan’ was entirely shot on sound stages, including one big set of a Montmartre street scene in this genre film – a musical comedy, but it's something more, a portrait of an impresario for whom opening a theatre and producing a show are the highest goals in life. Gabin is terrific – one sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and still capture the audience.
Renoir wrote the screenplay, based on an idea of André-Paul Antoine, and there is a pervasive feeling of improvisation in most of the scenes. Critics have heralded the magnitude of Jean Renoir’s achievement in employing and exalting the cancan as a metaphor for all artistic endeavours, with Gabin’s dedicated impresario serving as an alter ego for Renoir.
Renoir remains a compassionate observer of the sheer strangeness and variety of existence as here he caricatures high society and the aristocracy, but with remarkably little malice. Renoir's love-letter to Parisian bohemian life, (‘French Cancan’) is beautiful with ornately decorated period sets, and the constant clamor of scurrying theatrical troupes and passionate love triangles – it explodes with lyrical explosions of colour, vitality, and sensuality. However Renoir typically layers the film undercurrents of politics and feeling, suggesting that there's more to an artist's life than distraction and surface beauty.
In the 1950s he returned to France to make a remarkable trilogy which were all in Technicolor and all musical comedies: ‘The Golden Coach’ (1955), named by Andrew Sarris as the greatest film ever made; ‘French Cancan’, and ‘Elena and Her Men’ (1956). The three 1950s musical comedies are often described as Renoir's ‘art trilogy’, and this one is most single-mindedly dedicated to the bond between performer and audience.
‘French Cancan’ is a delicious musical comedy that deserves comparison with the golden age Hollywood musicals of the same period. Essentially it's a ‘let’s put on a show’ type scenario…in this case inspired by the origins of the famous Montmartre cabaret ‘Moulin Rouge’ and the backstage characters who inhabit the ‘Chinese Screen’ theatre.
Jean Gabin, perhaps the greatest of leading men – in his fourth collaboration with Renoir – [‘The Lower Depths’ (1936), ‘Grand Illusion’ (1937) and ‘Le Bête Humaine’ (1938)] plays a man who makes no pretense and no faithfulness to anyone and makes it clear that his only loyalty is to the stage.
‘French Cancan’ was entirely shot on sound stages, including one big set of a Montmartre street scene in this genre film – a musical comedy, but it's something more, a portrait of an impresario for whom opening a theatre and producing a show are the highest goals in life. Gabin is terrific – one sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and still capture the audience.
Renoir wrote the screenplay, based on an idea of André-Paul Antoine, and there is a pervasive feeling of improvisation in most of the scenes. Critics have heralded the magnitude of Jean Renoir’s achievement in employing and exalting the cancan as a metaphor for all artistic endeavours, with Gabin’s dedicated impresario serving as an alter ego for Renoir.
Renoir remains a compassionate observer of the sheer strangeness and variety of existence as here he caricatures high society and the aristocracy, but with remarkably little malice. Renoir's love-letter to Parisian bohemian life, (‘French Cancan’) is beautiful with ornately decorated period sets, and the constant clamor of scurrying theatrical troupes and passionate love triangles – it explodes with lyrical explosions of colour, vitality, and sensuality. However Renoir typically layers the film undercurrents of politics and feeling, suggesting that there's more to an artist's life than distraction and surface beauty.