Moulin Rouge

Constance Bennett stars with Franchot Tone, Russ Columbo, Tullio Carminati, and Helen Westley in "Moulin Rouge" from 1934.

The story concerns an ex-performer, Helen (Bennett) who desires to go back on the stage. However, her husband, involved in the production of a new musical, objects.

When Helen learns that the famous French singer Raquel has been cast, she has a fit. Due to their resemblance to one another, she and Raquel had done a "sister act" in the past.

When the two meet, Raquel says that she needs a break - she knows all the songs anyway, so she will return on opening night. Meanwhile, Helen can handle the rehearsals. All she has to do is dye her hair blonde, which she does.

The situation becomes complicated when it appears that both the producer (Carminati) and Tone are both after her. This upsets Helen, and she decides she has to know whether or not her husband will leave her for Raquel.

This gives Bennett a great opportunity to imitate a French chanteuse and sing a couple of great songs, wriitten by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, Coffee in the Morning and Kisses at Night, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which some old-timers may remember as a Tony Bennett song. Constance Bennett actually at one point did a nightclub act; her voice as pleasant, but what put her over was her interpretation of the material.

She costars here with Russ Columbo who died at 26 under bizarre circumstances - a bullet from an antique pistol ricocheted off of a table and killed him. He had a good voice and was nice-looking, although in order to have a film career, he would have had to loosen up.

The major part of the film is the big show, a Busby Berkeley ripoff. Lucille Ball is one of the dancers. They all wore quite revealing costumes.

Pleasant musical with good performances. I love Constance Bennett, and it was great to hear her sing.

Constance Bennett wants to go back on stage after leaving it to marry, but husband Franchot Tone won't let her, so she switched place with the other half of her vaudeville sister act, who was a success in Paris as Mlle. Raquel, but would rather make whoopee in Atlantic City than rehearse in New York.

Competently done, though Constance Bennett's singing sounded better with her 'French' accent (perhaps the sound in the first reel got distorted). There is a grand finale of about 15 minutes that has most of the singing and dancing, which is typical for movies for the time. Some of the gags are good and some of the women's costumes are great.

Unrelated to other moves of the same name.

Despite the title, this film has nothing to do with either the biography of Toulouse-Lautrec nor the famous musical. Instead, it's a silly and forgettable comedy starring Constance Bennett and Franchot Tone. While I love old films, I had a real difficult time enjoying this one.

When the film begins, you learn that Helen (Bennett) loves her husband, Douglas (Tone), but longs to go back on stage. Some time ago, she was the other half of an act...but he insists (like most men of his day) that she stay home and be his dutiful wife. But she decides to play a trick on him when she learns her old partner Raquel (also Bennett) is coming to America. As the two are identical strangers and equally talented, she asks Raquel to let her pretend to be her to see how Douglas reacts. Naturally, she is a perfect duplicate for Raquel in every way and she's a success...but it also appears as if Douglas is ready to now dump his wife for Raquel!

The film's success all depends on the audience's ability to accept a very bad (in my opinion) cliché--the identical stranger. Shows like "I Dream of Jeanie", "Bewitched" and "The Patty Duke Show" all devoted much of their content to this sort of plot device...and in many ways the film comes off more like a bad 60s sitcom than a movie someone would actually pay to see. Additionally, way too much uninteresting music made this one a chore to finish. Not among the actors' best work, that's for sure.

Constance Bennett wants to go back on the stage, but husband and songwriter Franchot Tone wants her to stay home. What he doesn't know is that the Parisian singer he is hiring for his new show used to be in a sister act with Miss Bennett; she agrees to let Miss Bennett take her place for rehearsals. Over this time, she entrances not only Tone, but his best friend, Tullio Carminati.

It's one of the few musicals that Zanuck's 20th Century Productions turned out before the merger with Fox, and as usual, no expense was spared. Warren & Dubin provided three songs, including "Boulevard of Broken dreams"; Russell Markert did the choreography; and Russ Columbo and the Bosworth sisters perform. Helen Westley gets most of the good lines in a script written by Nunnally Johnson and Henry Lehrman, and director Sidney Lanfield offers a sprightly opening, with the set-up being explained while acrobats audition or the show. The story, of course, is trivial, the old chestnut about spouses in disguise seducing each other. But the excellence of the production makes it watchable throughout.

A sumptuous retread of the old chestnut about a spouse impersonating a fictitious love rival which provides a sadly brief chance to admire Constance Bennett as a brunette and the pre-Code costumes of the chorus girls.

Ms Bennett actually supported Garbo a few years later in 'Two-Faced Woman' (1941), yet another version of this particular tale...