Moulin Rouge

The first 20 minutes of this movie are truly exhilarating - a fast-moving and flashy Technicolor sequence set in the famous music hall, with cancan dancers, amazing lookalike re-creations of period characters and a magnificent sense of the vibrancy of 1880s Paris. This segment is one of director John Huston's finest achievements and rightly helped the film win its Oscars for best art direction and best costume design. The film then goes on to tell the morbid tale of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, memorably played by José Ferrer, much of it on his knees (though a dwarf was used for some long shots). Ferrer is brilliant, seeking not a shred of sympathy as he fleshes out the disabled artist's weaknesses. The women in his life are particularly well cast, notably an unusually credible Zsa Zsa Gabor as the dancer Jane Avril. The movie takes liberties with the truth, but then what biopic doesn't? It well deserved its seven Oscar nominations, and is still immensely enjoyable today.