Le fantôme du Moulin-Rouge (1925) User Reviews

A Delicious "Comédie Fantastique"

[FerdinandVonGalitzien · 7/10 · 1 March 2007]

Herr Julien Boissel ( George Vaultier ) is a wealthy French businessman who is in love with a rich and French heiress, Dame Yvonne ( Sandra Milovanoff ). Both love each one secretly but pretty soon disgrace will interrupt such passionate love because the president of a yellow newspaper is blackmailing Yvonne's father, a retired Minister of State. Publication of some delicate, incriminating documents would cause such a big scandal and the newspaper editor wants to marry Yvonne, you see. Herr Julien, now abandoned by his lover, depressed and grieved, decides to spend a night at the joyful "Moulin Rouge" ( a place in where broad-minded girls dances all night long ) trying to forget his pain. There he will meet a doctor who will experiment with him using his new techniques that separate his spirit from his body.

"Le Fantôme Du Moulin Rouge" was the third film directed by Herr René Clair and the first full-length film of his filmography. The early and silent films of this important French director were characterized by their experimentation and avant-garde boldness, not to mention that he was very fond of fantasy films, a film genre in which includes "Le Fantôme…".

The storytelling of the film is perfect and much elaborated. It depicts a story around what could it be, at first, a simple film anecdote of those classic matters of unrequited love that affects even to the high classes; but it is more thanks to the inclusion in the plot of imaginative and fantastic elements.

Herr Clair uses tricks, visual and special effects with an oneiric depth in order to illustrate the wild doings of the Herr Julien's freed spirit (and that's another surprisingly element of this film ). It's a spirit that doesn't torture his former earthly body as do the classic spirits that we already know ( don't tell this aristocrat that you don't know a spirit in your neighbourhood?!… ). This ethereal spirit prefers to have a carefree and good time around Paris, doing pranks around the city or in the cabarets, leaving those earthly love problems and sorrows for his former body. So this German aristocrat can say that it is a ludic Mr. Hyde, certainly.

Due to these original elements, the film, at first, a kind of "phantasmagorie", now turns to a delicious "comédie fantastique", both film genres that Herr René knew by that time very well, including a frantic and soft metaphysical ending that is absolutely remarkable.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must toast to his spirit with some spirits.

A Phantom Flies Through the City

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 22 September 2019]

Rene Clair's first full-length feature like most of his early films combines slapstick with Melies-like special effects superimposed rather willy-nilly on shots of Paris as it looked in the twenties.

It segues abruptly from a morose first third in which the hero (Georges Vaultier) is denied the hand of the fair heroine (Sandra Milowanoff) before a scientist's experiments in astral projection release the hero's id to fly about Paris playing pranks like setting light to a man's newspaper, before a rather gruesome conclusion with his spirit restored to his naked corpse just as a surgeon at an autopsy is performing the first incision. No really!!

Delightful, fluid fantasy

[the_mysteriousx · 8/10 · 12 March 2005]

I'm not very knowledgeable about Rene Clair other than seeing the outstanding 'And Then There Were None' from 1945, but the title and plot sounded interesting so I picked this one up and was very nicely surprised.

The film deals with a man named Julien who is in love with a woman and wants to marry her. However, the woman's father, who is a famous statesman, is being blackmailed by another suitor and forces his daughter to marry him instead. The father is understanding to his daughter, but simply cannot let the blackmail information get out to the public. Julien, meanwhile takes a night out to the Moulin Rouge and being alone and depressed, encounters a strange doctor who takes him to his home and performs an experiment on him. This experiment frees his soul from his body and Julien's newly liberated soul takes aim at playing around Paris doing such things as driving cars, burning newspapers out of peoples' hands and rearranging top hats on a sidewalk, all under the guise of being invisible to the naked eye. It is not long, though, before Julien's comatose body is discovered, the doctor is arrested for murder. Julien then begins to miss his beloved girlfriend and has to save the doctor to get himself back to his body.

A wonderful sense of playfulness dictates this film. The editing in the exciting finale is outstanding. It's a tense, and fun ending even though we know what will happen. The fantasy elements are well-done, as the man's spirit can do so many limitless acts such as hover over cars driving down the streets. The comedy is very silly and incorporates well with the story even in the more serious moments. It's an impressive film for 1924 and I'm certainly more interested in picking up more of Clair's other works through the period.

Can Can't

[dbdumonteil · 4/10 · 18 February 2007]

I certainly have a problem with René Clair .I've been watching his movies for years and forgetting all about them.I should love him,as I love Duvivier,Renoir,Carné,Gance,Grémillon ,Pagnol and all the celebrated directors of that great era but I can't .Even when he introduces French can can I can't.

Like some of his colleagues ,notably the highly superior Julien Duvivier ("la Charette Fantôme" "flesh and fantasy"),he had a penchant for the fantasy genre."Paris qui dort" and this movie were the first attempts in that direction.It continued with "the ghost goes west" "I married a witch" and "'this happened tomorrow". No wonder he made his best American film with a "rational" whodunit ,Agatha Christie's "And then there were none" aka "ten little Indians" .

His screenplay is old hat ,straight out of the ark.Just compare with Renoir's "La Petite Fille Aux allumettes"(or Epstein 's "Chute de La Maison Usher") for the silent era and Maurice Tourneur's sensational "La Main Du Diable" or Lherbier's "La Nuit Fantastique" for the talkies .And I will not even mention Carné's "les Visiteurs du Soir" or Cocteau's "La Belle et la Bete".Those artists created an eerie world and their movies are still strong today. Clair's movies introduce heroes who cannot stand the real world anymore,so they choose they will be ghosts and all course everybody will work out fine after some de rigueur episodes .It's light optimistic stuff devoid of any sense of drama .That could be valid comedy if Clair showed a sense of humor!But he is not Sacha Guitry,by a long shot! His plot is a trite melodrama : a father is forced to marry his daughter to a greybeard who is also a blackmailer ;and naturally the daughter is in love with a younger -but not particularly handsome- man.Thanks to a scientist ,the poor lover becomes a ghost who haunts the Moulin Rouge (check the title).And pretty soon the professor is charged with murder.That could have been a good plot,but it's neither really funny nor suspenseful.

the strange case of René Clair

[kekseksa · 20 September 2016]

The story of René Clair is what you call a tragedy of success. The longer he lived, the more eminent he became, the worse his films. And the process of decline is remarkably easy to chart.

During the 1920s and 1930s he made a series of delightful fantasies (this one it is true is not one the best), starting, in the days when he was toying (I choose my word with care) with surrealism, with the experimental Entr'Acte in 1924 and including (to name only the best) Paris qui dort, Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million and À Nous la Liberté (his first sound film although still very much using the aesthetic of silent film (it was a major influence on Chaplin's Modern Times).

Clair was famously sceptical about the advent of sound in film, fearing that it would mean the loss of a certain aesthetic that had developed and of which he himself was at this time a strong partisan. He was not the only one by any means to be sceptical; it ws a feeling quite commonly expressed by the more serious directors of the silent period. During the thirties people began to scoff at this scepticism and they tended to become defensive about their views. Many recanted what they now considered to be their "folly". It was not in the lest folly and now that, at long last, we are beginning to rediscover the great wealth of the films of the silent era, we can begin perhaps to appreciate that the sceptics with regard to sound were not necessarily wrong. There was a certain rather superficial gain from sound but there was also a deep loss....

During the war, Clair spent some time in the US where he became an almost aggressive penitent with regard to "sound" film and, abandoning the poetic fantasy of his early films, made the abysmal comedy I Married a Witch (1942) - fantasy for the US cinema had to be dressed in false "realism" and turned into simple-minded farce - and the very ordinary And Then There Were None based on a novel by Agatha Christie.

How anyone can find these banal US films even remotely comparable to the poetic fantasy - Clair has some claims to be the originator of the style = of his French films of the the twenties and thirties, I cannot imagine. It is sometimes claimed of And Then There Were None that is a particularly "faithful" adaptation. Even this is false. The original novel Ten Little N****** (only complete idiots "prohibit word) is one of Christie's darkest works,intended as a study in evil and does not have a happy ending. Clair's version, which catches none of the darkness and changes the ending, is a complete travesty. There were several even worse US films made during the same period.

One could say that the experience of the US, the espousal of the US notion of the "realistic" film, ruined René Clair for the rest of his long career but this would be slightly to exaggerate his decline. He was able to recover his sense of fantasy to some degree after his return to France in such films as La Beauté du diable and Porte de Lilas (both much superior to his US films) but the majority of his later films are, like his US films, uninteresting in form and bland in content. So although he remained a "famous" director (the first, apart from the cultural polymath Marcel Pagnol, to become a member of the Académie française), he had come by the sixties to typify everything that was dull and imaginative in French film and was a particular butt of the "new wave" as it emerged which characterised his films as typical of what they called "le cinéma du papa".

I do however understand the point of view of the critic who finds Clair difficult to love or admire in the way one loves and admires certain films at any rate of Renoir or the films of Guitry or Vigo or Epstein or Feyder or Duvivier. Delightful as his early films are, thee is I think something lacking in them, an over-lightness that does indeed make the films, enjoyable though they are to watch. somewhat easily forgettable.

And I think it is this "light" quality that helps to explain his subsequent decline as a director. He merely "toyed" with fashionable surrealism, his elder brother Henri Chomette, so forgotten he is nicknamed "Clair-obscur", being perhaps the genuine radical; he defended a "visual" aesthetic associated with silent film only to discard it completely in his US films (as however also did Renoir at the same period and never really recovered from his US experience); he espoused poetic fantasy only to throw it over for conventional "realism" when this suited his book; as a realist, he was still unable to capture the seriousness even in filming the work of a detective novelist like Agatha Christie. A director, in other words, of great talent, but a bit of a turning weather-vane ("girouette" in French)without the authentic commitment or the deeper dimension of which the other great French directors of the period were capable.

Enjoyable, well made classic (despite distinct faults and weaknesses)

[I_Ailurophile · 8/10 · 19 April 2023]

Some say that the silent era represents "simpler entertainment for a simpler time," and while that's far from being true across the board, I think this is probably an example of that notion. There's a notable directness in this film at points (not least at the start) that arguably pulls back the curtain on the artificiality of the presentation and places an upper limit on one's enjoyment. This directness is seen in the rather brisk pace that the movie maintains; the more exaggerated expressions and body language of the actors, common in irregular application during the silent era but removed from the more natural and nuanced acting modern viewers are familiar with; instances of a decided bluntness in intertitles representing both exposition and dialogue; and direction and editing that in some cases chops up dialogue between characters by spotlighting close-ups of one and then the other, instead of showing them side by side or face to face. None of this is to say that 'The phantom of the Moulin Rouge' isn't entertaining or worthwhile on its own merits, but I don't think it's out of sorts to suppose that this is best suited for those viewers who are already enamored of the silent era.

Even with such indelicacies or inelegance, there's much to appreciate here, and in fact I think the picture is quite good. The story of Walter Schlee's novel is ripe for telling, and filmmaker René Clair has penned a strong screenplay in adaptation. Though his direction and the pacing generally may be brusque in this instance, the scene writing is firm and fairly detailed as it builds a relatively lighthearted but suitably compelling narrative. To a somewhat ordinary scenario mixing comedy, drama, and romance is added a significant fantastical element, and the famed Moulin Rouge provides a tinge of flavor in its use as a setting. The plot is maybe a little light, and the comedic aspect is not rarely so robust as to specifically be funny, but the title is all that it needs to be to keep us engaged and provide consistent amusement. With this in mind, Robert Gys' sets are pretty fabulous, and the costume design; I appreciate the minor spectacle that the titular establishment represents, even if only in passing, and the climax is excellent. Any stunts and effects that are employed come off quite well, particularly the the apparition. Though I don't agree that all of Clair's choices of editing were ideal, many are, and regardless he demonstrates deft capability in that capacity. Why, for that matter, while the ultimate execution of some moments is a tad curt, mostly I think Clair also illustrates fine skill in orchestrating shots and scenes as director, lending to the entertainment 'The phantom of the Moulin Rouge' has to provide.

The storytelling wavers between pointedly forthright and cleverly restrained, but I believe on the balance that the result is very well done and deserving. The deliberate withholding and dispensation of plot is unexpectedly witty, making the approximate second half discernibly more sharp and vibrant in the process. The cast's contributions are constrained somewhat by the fleet-footed build, but still I think all give able performances to bring the tableau to life. To be honest, I kind of had mixed expectations before I sat for it, and even after I first pressed "play." Yet while the feature isn't without its weaknesses, by and large I had a great time watching. Undue terseness in the construction is outweighed by the more substantial intelligence of the writing and the labor from behind the scenes, producing a tale that's sprightly, mirthful, and fun, with sufficient drama to propel the proceedings. This 1925 movie may be uneven with various faults, but the sum total is much more sturdy than not, serving up a rich and reasonably engrossing viewing experience. Those who have a hard time abiding older cinema may not find anything here to change their minds, but for those with a taste for the classics I believe 'The phantom of the Moulin Rouge' holds up well, and is very much worth checking out if one has the opportunity.