Ewald André Dupont | Moulin Rouge / 1928

mother love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ewald André Dupont (screenwriter and director) Moulin Rouge / 1928

 

It’s strange that given its brilliantly-filmed first 30 minutes that German director E. A. Dupont, here directing his first British film, is not given more critical attention regarding his 1928 film Moulin Rouge. Working with his brilliant cinematographer Werner Brandes, more is packed into the first quarter of this 2-hour film about pre-Depression Paris than almost any other film provides. Dupont and Brandes are immersed in the boulevard and café nightlife of the Pigalle in Montmartre more than any film does until John-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur (1956) and Julien Duvivier’s Boulevard (1960).

     And after diving in an out of the Pigalle bars and nightclubs the film centers around acts that give us what seems to be a fairly accurate picture of the Moulin Rouge entertainment (even though the interior theater scenes were filmed not in the Moulin Rouge but in the Lido and in London), including a wonderful series of vignette’s that capture the various aspects of the theater’s audiences—a gentleman distracted by a nearby female beauty, upbraided by his wife; a young girl terrified by a woman on stage with a large python wrapped around her neck; gawking tourists, including a Harold Lloyd look-alike; and a young man standing next to a sailor, who through the old trick of swallowing a burning cigarette, gets the man to put his arms around him just to check out his health. 

     On stage we get a glimpse of the vast acts that Americans know best through Ziegfeld’s US Broadway imitations, including vast lineups of chorus girls decked out in beaded and jeweled costumes; Arabian scenes in which a sitting sultan dressed is in a thawb so ornate that when he stands, with the camera looking up at his presence, it appears he is costumed in a female gown; racist skits such as an imitation bonsai version of a Japanese Kabuki play performed by little people and a black-face number in which the featured dancer Parysia (Olga Tschechowa)* attempts, unsuccessfully, to outdo the contortions of Josephine Baker; and, of significant LGBTQ interest, a slightly longer sequence involving two obviously gay chorus boys, naked except for glitteringly sequined “dancing diapers” who create a series of “fairy friezes” of the likes of which were seen in US cinema only in John W. Harkrider and Millard Webb’s Glorifying the American Girl, of a year later, which featured similar scenes from an actual Ziegfeld Follies production—pictures of which, when I attempted to post them on Facebook (a quite hilarious incident in hindsight, since it appears that the 2022 Facebook censors felt the 1929 stage performer’s costumes insufficiently covered up their nakedness) got me thrown into Facebook prison for a month!

     But except for these scenes and the sailor and his boyfriend, Dupont’s Moulin Rouge is a strictly heterosexual affair—although certainly one of the most perverted of heterosexual stories put to screen since Charles Bryant’s Salomé (1923).

     Near the end of the acts I have described above, two individuals enter box seats at the Moulin Rouge, Margaret (Eve Gray) and Andre (Jean Bradin) to watch the rest of the performances by the show’s feature performer, Parysia. Andre is a wealthy young man and his girlfriend, Margaret, just happens to me Parysia’s daughter who has returned from years of education in select boarding school somewhere else in Europe, almost unable to recognize the beautiful woman on the stage as her mother.

      She is, however, not the only one taken by Parysia’s beauty, as Andre almost immediately gets an erection for the older woman that is so overwhelming that he must excuse himself for a moment as he runs out to the theater café in order to buy a program with numerous photos of the star. Later that evening, we see him in bed, unable to sleep, as he picks up the magazine which we clearly recognize in today’s parlance he intends to use as “whacking off” material, while the director alternates these scenes with images of the real woman rubbing on face cream as she bemoans her age.

     In fact, Tschechowa was only 3 years older than the woman who portrayed her daughter when the film was made, but the actress convinces us—while still wowing Andre—that she is far older.

     Andre’s infatuation might simply be humorous, but in fact he is secretly engaged to marry Margaret, and falling in love with one’s future mother-in-law was verboten even in the Paris of 1928.

     That doesn’t stop him from attempting to declare his affections to Parysia, who is quite rightfully both somewhat appreciative of his revelations and utterly shocked! And the fact that he is engaged to her daughter, doesn’t stop her from immediately getting in her car and driving off to the family estate to convince André’s father (Georges Tréville) that despite her being an actor it has not contaminated her daughter, and that he should give his permission immediately for the marriage. Just to convince him that she’s serious about the matter, she casually leaves behind her handkerchief, a subtle threat that if he doesn’t go along with her plans that she can make his life quite miserable in the gossip columns. He immediately writes of his approval.

      That is the nearly full substance of this film’s plot. The rest of the story is filled out with melodramatic details as the young boy suffers deeply for his oedipal complex, guiltily sulking around the innocent, and rather empty-headed Margaret, who is so blind to his lack of interest in her that she joins her mother in a lovely outing to a haute couture fashion house for her trousseau and gets so drunk from champagne at a private dinner with André that she doesn’t have to notice his odd grimaces as he compares her handsome face and childish demeanor with the grace and beauty of her mother. Fortunately, cinematographer Brandes captures all the angst in such beautiful tableaux vivants that the film maintains our interest.

      André attempts to write a confession to his father before finally determining to commit suicide. He visits Parysia’s dressing room to leave her flowers and a suicide note, but even backs out of that, arriving instead to the house, where he has scheduled a drive with Margaret to his father with the hope of returning with him to Paris for the wedding.

      André, however, has cut the brakes, and insists that given the bad roads and numerous hills on route that it’s too dangerous for Margaret to accompany him. For the first time, Margaret truly sees her lover as he really is: a frightened and highly confused young man. What is he talking about? Bad roads and hills? Surely that’s not a sufficient excuse to go alone. But when she queries him about his logic, he falls into a faint. And, after she and her mother, get him to couch, she determines to make the drive alone to bring back his father.

       When he is awakened by a telephone call for Parysia, and discovers that she has driven off in his stead, he interrupts the telephone call to tell his mother-in-law that the message will reveal that her that her daughter is dead, explaining what he has done.

        The telephone call is simply from her dresser, reporting a new costume has arrived. But the now furious tigress Parysia demands he take her car, catch up with Margaret and save her, after which he should kill himself.

        The last quarter of this film is filled with action as the two cars speed to and from André’s family home, linking up finally with him attempting to save his fiancée by pulling her from his out-of-control sports car into his sedan en route. It ends with a terrible crash, André badly wounded and Margaret near death.

        Despite the news, Parysia must still go on stage which she attempts in various states of dizzying shock, collapsing backstage at the very moment that Margaret pulls through in surgery, the doctors announcing that she will live.

       Evidently in the process of nearly losing Margaret, André has rediscovered his love for her and been cured of his oedipal infatuation. This time, as Parysia later puts it, he’s been given an opportunity to rectify his behavior. The two rush off on their honeymoon as Parysia sends flowers, unable to see them off, since she is once more onstage delighting her audience with her youthful beauty.

      If Dupont’s story is negligible, the way he and Brandes tell it through their photographic images is so brilliant that I’d suggest that critics take another look at this work to reevaluate its place in film history. And if it doesn’t offer much in the way of specific LGBTQ history, what it reveals about outsider love is utterly fascinating.

 

Los Angeles, February 18, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).