Saw French Cancan, a pretty cream-puff of a film about the creation of the famous Moulin Rouge theater. The film is a typical sort of show-biz film about sexy primadonnas sleeping their way to jewels and fame, pretty ingenues being inducted into the scene, wealthy backers who suddenly pull funding, or grant funding, causing sudden tonal gearshifts as the production is doomed or rescued, respectively. Also typical of the genre, I thought the most interesting lens was to examine fantasy and exploitation.
The most main character is the theater manager who conceives of and creates the Moulin Rouge: it's supposed to be a middle-class sort of burlesque hall. A place where people can look at pretty, sexy ladies for a reasonable price. It's supposed to evoke the fantasy of wealth and sophistication enjoyed in gentlemen's clubs, but to be financially accessible to the general public. It's not luxury but the illusion of luxury that's being sold.
Similarly, the manager recruits a new starlet by essentially seducing her, both with his own charms and with the charms of the theater: attention, praise, lofty but vague promises about great art and immortality. Contrast this new girl's eager excitement with the aging prima-donna's hunt for security. The fantasy is an easy sell, but it comes at the cost of comfort and conventionality.
Now: is anyone being exploited? Is the manager tricking this new girl or is she running forth eyes open? She is eager to be on stage but the manager and the audiences are fickle: they always want the new thing, they quickly discard the old favorite. The warmth of the applause is wonderful, but the silence after the applause dies is always waiting to return. In all of this fantasy, surely someone is being lied to.
On top of all of this, the Paris of this film is a sanitized, picturesque one, shot on a sound-stage, lit by technicolor, populated by charming characters. The new girl's home is in a spacious laundry, with a little man outside, painting pictures of the Seine in the background. It is all painted faces and rented clothes, a hair's-breadth away from prostitution.
The film is dated and a little quaint, but fun. It's a theme I like thinking about anyway.
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