Moulin Rouge (1952 Film) Can-Can Dance (HD)

Moulin Rouge is an Academy Award winning 1952 British drama film directed by John Huston, produced by John and James Woolf for their Romulus Films company and released by United Artists. The film is set in Paris in the late 19th century, following artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the city’s bohemian sub-culture in and around the burlesque palace, the Moulin Rouge. The screenplay is by Huston, based on the novel by Pierre La Mure. The cinematography was by Oswald Morris. This movie was screened at Venice Film Festival (1953) where it won the Silver Lion. The cancan is believed to have evolved from the final figure in the quadrille, which is a social dance by two couples. The exact origin of the dance is unknown but the steps may have been inspired by a popular entertainer of the 1820s, Charles Mazurier, well known for his acrobatics, including the grand écart or jump splits — both popular features of the cancan. The dance was considered scandalous, and for a while, there were attempts to repress may have been partly because in the 19th century, women wore pantalettes, which had an open crotch, meaning that a high kick could be unintentionally revealing. There is no evidence that cancan dancers wore special closed underwear, although it has been claimed that the Moulin Rouge management did not permit dancers to perform in “revealing undergarments“. Occasionally people dancing the cancan were arrested but there is no record of it being banned, as some accounts claim.