French Cancan

Written and directed by Jean Renoir, this 1955 French-Italian musical comedy-drama pays tribute to the café-concerts of 19th-century Paris, with their popular singers and dancers. The story evokes the birth of the famed Moulin Rouge through the life of an ambitious impresario. Jean Gabin, Françoise Arnoul and María Félix head the cast, and the film is filled with song and dance numbers. Where Renoir's earlier The Golden Coach had celebrated 18th-century Italian commedia dell'arte, here he turns to the Parisian variety stage. Visually, the picture recalls the paintings of Edgar Degas and the Impressionists, among them the director's own father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The production also marked Renoir's return to France and to French cinema after an exile that had begun in 1940.