Moulin Rouge (1952)

José Ferrer: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec

Photos 

Quotes 

• Sarah : You should not drink so fast, Monsieur Lautrec. It burns your stomach.

  Henri : I'm thirsty. Please.

  Sarah : Wine is for thirst.

  Henri : At least you did not say water.

  Sarah : Water is for Americans.

  Henri : Some men can swing by their heels on the flying trapeze. Some men can become president of the republic. I can drink cognac.

• Jane Avril : What is wrong with me, Henri? Other women find love and happiness. I find only disenchantment.

  Henri : But you find it so often.

• Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec : You should be horsewhipped for smearing the name of Toulouse-Lautrec over every kiosk in Paris. That revolting poster is a disgrace.

  Henri : I am sorry you do not like my work, Father. But I shall continue to sign it as I please, for it is my name and it is my work.

  Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec : Work? A pretext to hang about cheap dance halls and drink all night. You call that pornographic trash work?

  Henri : Yes, I call it work. On this I am more of an authority than you, Father. You've never worked. Our kind never did. We are the grand seigneurs, we are above work. We cloak ourselves in the glory of our name as if it were some remarkable achievement just to be born. The truth is, our world died beside Marie Antoinette. We are the fossils of a bygone age. And I have dared to break the pattern. I work.

• Henri : [while walking past kissing couples]  On the Bateaux Mouche, the only polite direction in which to look is up... at the moon.

• Henri : We each have our own escape, you see. Mother her prayers. You, your horses your falcons and your dreams of an age that is no more. And I, my cognac.

• Henri : Marriage is like a dull meal with the dessert at the beginning. I have it on the very highest authority.

• Henri : Will you to the opera go with me tomorrow night, mademoiselle? While you make up your mind, let me remind you of the ladies of the Spanish court, who always kept their pet apes by their side so that they themselves would look more beautiful.

  Myriamme Hayam : Is your wit always turned against yourself, Monsieur Lautrec?

  Henri : This is to assure you in my case there will be no advances to repulse. I will ask for no more than an occasional handful of peanuts.

• Jane Avril : Have you ever had contact with a legal mind, Henri? It's beyond belief. I wasn't the vision of his dreams, I was the party of the first part. He didn't declare his love for me, he merely acknowledged that as a state of affection exists... Oh Henri, why couldn't you be tall and handsome?

  Henri : Two more of these and I shall be.

  [He drinks] 

  Jane Avril : You are the only man who has never bored me.

  Henri : I am the only man who has never loved you.

  Jane Avril : Henri, over there. There is the most beautiful creature. Look at those shoulders.

  Henri : For your sake, I pray that they are not padded.

• Henri : Big crowd tonight.

  Zidler : Too big, thanks to your poster. Oh, I know I'm making millions, but I liked the Moulin Rouge as she was, lighthearted and hot-blooded, a little strumpet who thought only of tonight. Now she is grown up and knows better. She has money in her stocking, wears corsets, and never drinks a drop too much. Worst of all, she never sees her old friends anymore. She has gone into society. Last night she entertained a cabinet minister and his wife and daughter. It's *disgusting*!

• Henri : The morning wind is cold, but not so cold as the waters of the *Seine*.

  Myriamme Hayam : You are mistaken, monsieur. I am *not* a candidate for the river.

  Henri : We are *all* candidates, when driven by the mania of *love*.

• Prudish woman : Are you Monsieur Joyant?

  Maurice Joyant : Yes, madame.

  Prudish woman : You should be arrested. To hang such a thing on your wall! Look at this woman. She is undressing, with a man looking on! Disgusting!

  Henri : Forgive me, madame, the lady is not undressing, she is dressing. The gentleman happens to be her husband. They are celebrating their twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. They are going to have dinner with their oldest son. He is a taxidermist. I am appalled that you should thus malign these good people. It goes to prove what I have always maintained, that evil exists only in the eye of the beholder. I will thank you to stop looking at my pictures.

• Henri : Well, Jane, what a long road you have traveled. Only a few years ago you were singing for your supper, and here you are a full-fledged star at twenty-nine.

  Jane Avril : Twenty-five!

  Henri : Of course, I beg your pardon. Twenty-five.

  Jane Avril : I have been twenty-five for four years, and I shall stay there for another four. Then I'll be twenty-seven for a while. I intend to grow old *gracefully*!

• Henri : One should *never* meet a person whose work one admires; What they *do* is always so much better than what they *are*!

• Henri : Love is a state of confusion in which the victim can not distinguish between spiritual aspiration, carnal desire, and pride of ownership. The wise man satisfies the different thirsts at different fountains.

• Myriamme Hayam : Do you drink for pleasure, Monsieur Lautrec?

  Henri : Is there any other reason?

  Myriamme Hayam : Many. My father, for instance, because he sought oblivion. Mercifully, he found it, quickly.

  Henri : Your father was very fortunate.

  Myriamme Hayam : Then, do you too seek oblivion?

  Henri : I meant, to have so understanding a daughter.

• Henri : I am not a moralist, Sergeant. I do not blame people for what they are, only for seeming to be what they are not.

• Marie Charlet : A bathtub! Why, you have a bathtub! Oh, let me have a bath. Please...

  Henri : If you like.

  Marie Charlet : It will be the first time I ever had a bath - in a real bath tub, that is.

• Marie Charlet : You have beautiful eyes - without those spectacles.

  Henri : It's the first time I was ever told that by a policeman.

• Marie Charlet : What was it that policeman called you? Monsieur Toulouse something?

  Henri : Yes.

  Marie Charlet : What kind of a name is that?

  Henri : My own.

  Marie Charlet : It isn't a name, it's a town! People don't go about calling themselves Paris or Marseilles, do they?

• Marie Charlet : Didn't waste anytime getting into bed, did you. What's a matter? Afraid I'd see your legs?

  Henri : Get out! Get out! Put your clothes back on and get out of here.

  Marie Charlet : Stop shouting! You want to wake everybody in the house? I don't care about your legs. It makes no difference to me that you are a cripple.

• Georges Seurat : How is the world going, Henri?

  Henri : The smell of paint sickens me and painters!

• Henri : Some 300 years ago a man named Da Vinci painted a portrait of a woman. Her husband did not like it and would not pay for it. Today it hangs in the Louvre and no one man in the world has enough money to buy it.

  Marie Charlet : What good does that do the - what's his name - the painter?

  Henri : Oh, he had his reward. He painted it.

  Marie Charlet : Doesn't make any sense to me.

• Henri : I wouldn't hurt you. I want to be good to you. Please let me, Marie. Let me have the joy of giving you things - freely. Don't put a tariff on everything you do.

• Henri : I know you don't mean half the things you say. The streets of Paris have taught you to strike quickly and draw blood first.

• Henri : Her past was too strong for her. The world she lives in is a jungle where people prowl like wild animals. They go without eating when the game is scarce. And when there is a kill, they claw and bite each other over it. It is a world of cruelty and cunning. But, it is free. I put chains on her. They only made her vicious. One night she broke them and escaped into her alleyway.

• Countess Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec : Come home now, Henri. Give up this life.

  Henri : It is the only one I have, Maman. And it is not all dissipation, as you might think. There is some virtue in it too. These canvases are your son's. Not a miserable cripple with shrunken legs.

  Countess Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec : Can you not paint at home in Toulouse? The countryside is so beautiful.

  Henri : I have a friend, Maman, he is a painter too. His name is Vincent Van Gogh. He paints wheat fields, hot with the sun of Provence. A man can stare at one of his canvases and go blind with delight. I cannot paint his fields. But, he cannot paint my girls at the Moulin Rouge. I am a painter of the streets - and of the gutter.

• Countess Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec : Show me your latest painting.

  Henri : This...

  Countess Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec : The paint is dry?

  Henri : Sometime one's inspiration falters.

• Jane Avril : If you are going to do a poster, it should be of me! I am the attraction here! It's my singing that draws the crowds.

  Henri : Forgive me, Jane, but it is much harder to draw a song than a dance.

• Henri : I drink. A little more each day. Thus, I forget my loneliness and my ugliness and the pain in my legs.

• Maurice Joyant : You've been drinking again.

  Henri : One must be fortified for such an occasion.

• Henri : I know I drink too much. I can't stop myself. I wish I could.

  Maurice Joyant : You must stop. At the rate you're going, you'll never reach 40.

  Henri : Neither did Raphael, nor Watteau, nor Correggio. I shall be in good company. Anyway, it's all for the best. Think how my paintings will soar in value.

• Henri : The wise woman patterns her life on the theory and practice of modern banking. She never gives her love, but only lends it on the best security, and at the highest rate of interest.

• Henri : It is not true that great art is simple. Why should it be? Life itself is not simple. Nor, is the human mind. Nor, for that matter, is the human heart.

• Myriamme Hayam : Won't you come in?

  Henri : Not tonight, Myriamme. I have another engagement.

  Myriamme Hayam : Oh. Where does one go at this hour?

  Henri : Some of the fountains at which I drink flow ceaselessly.

• Myriamme Hayam : You're shivering.

  Henri : It is cold and I need a drink.

  Myriamme Hayam : The first words that you ever said to me, "The morning wind is cold, but, not so cold as the waters of the Seine." Was that only one month ago, Henri?

• Henri : They say men kill the thing they love most. My poster did that part in destroying the Moulin. With great success, it became a spectacle.

• Georges Seurat : Drink your drink, Henri, and then we will go to the Louvre and refresh our souls, eh?

  Henri : The Louvre. That graveyard.

  Gauzi : Graveyard! The home of the Mona Lisa, and he calls it a, a graveyard!

  Anquetin an Artist : Ah, the Mona Lisa. Only the greatest painting in the world. At this moment I could kneel down and give thanks to Leonardo.

  Henri : And how do you know it is the greatest painting in the world? And how do you know it was by Leonardo?

  Anquetin an Artist : Because I feel it! I feel it here, in my heart.

  Henri : I feel in my heart that you are a pompous ass, but that does not make it so.

  Gauzi : Only Leonardo could have painted that smile. She smiles with her eyes!

  Henri : I don't care if she smiles with her navel, that still doesn't say that Da Vinci painted it.

• La Goulue : One day I'll go right down her throat, pull her heart out, and feed it to my cat!

  Henri : If you can get at her. She has long arms, Aicha.

  La Goulue : I'll crack them, I'll - ...

  [Aicha kicks her] 

  La Goulue : You kick me!

  Aicha : *You* kicked *me*!

  Henri : This calls for a drink. Cognac?

  La Goulue : Thank you.

  [she throws the drink in Aicha's face] 

  Henri : Aicha?

  Aicha : [Aicha accepts the glass and throws the contents in La Goulue's face]  Thanks.

  Henri : [smiles]  Now, we're all *friends* again.

  [the women fight] 

• Myriamme Hayam : Tell me about Marie Charlet.

  Henri : What do you want to know?

  Myriamme Hayam : Were you in love with her?

  Henri : Let us say that she opened doors for me that might better have remained closed. It's a long time ago.

  Myriamme Hayam : And have you never loved since?

  Henri : My dear Myriamme, any man can only play the fool once, no more. Unless he enjoys the role.

• Henri : Maman, I am leaving here. I am going to Paris. I shall become a painter. I shall try to make a life for myself.

  Countess Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec : You will... you will be lonely there, Henri!

  Henri : I will be lonely anywhere, Maman.

• La Goulue : Did you see that dirty nigger... step on my foot?

  Henri : I saw you kick her in the derrière.

• Henri : I always mean to sketch you like that, with your hands in your hair. But, the sight is so enchanting I forget to do anything about it.

  Marie Charlet : You're nice, Toulouse.