Paris - Moulin Rouge - 18e

Plate LXXXVI – the Moulin Rouge …

I had been warned. From the street, in daylight, the exterior of the Moulin Rouge is rather boring, tired and uninviting. And it was true. Baz Luhrmann’s spectacular 2001 eponymously named film, with the hero’s quest for Love Beauty and Truth, gives the place an image way beyond reality. I therefore imagine the disappointment of more recent travellers to be even greater. My challenge then was to get a shot that somehow made it worth the time I’d taken to get there, and that came close to equalling the poster images created of the Moulin Rouge by artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Thank goodness for the sculptural form of one of Hector Guimard’s decorative Métro arches, which I used to frame the familiar sight of the otherwise unremarkable little red mill’s exterior - the interior I am pleased to report still offers a glimpse into the romance of Paris in the Belle Epoque.

This cabaret theatre was built in 1889 by Joseph Oller, owner also of that other shrine of Parisian entertainment, the Olympia. The home of the famous and often imitated Can-Can dance, the Moulin Rouge has hosted many notable international performers since its opening including Ella Fitzgerald, Elton John and Liza Minelli, but it is for the lavishly costumed and produced adult music and dance spectacular revues that most visitors will venture onto this stretch of the Boulevard de Clichy at night. The lively and only moderately risqué Can-Can routines performed today (most often to Offenbach’s Barcarole) are somewhat ‘cleaned-up’ versions of the entertainment originally offered by the courtesans of the Moulin during its glory days as a classy brothel, when Can-Can was little more than an increasingly vulgar individual display of the lower female anatomy intended to entice their male customers.

Truth, Beauty and Love – well, maybe.