From the moment the camera takes us below the famed windmill of Paris' Moulin Rouge and into the glorious music hall, we are swept up in the visual delight of the world that inspired the fin-de-siècle artist Toulouse-Lautrec. Cancan dancers, their florid skirts whirling in a bawdy pageant, slip into compositions that recall Lautrec's famed posters of the equally famous cabaret. If the devil is in the details, then Moulin Rouge is devilishly good with its colorist flourishes and lush costumes, most notably Zsa Zsa Gabor's gowns designed by Schiaparelli. But Huston's biopic was based on Pierre La Mure's eponymous novel which took great artistic license with the facts of Lautrec's life. Jose Ferrer's portrayal stresses his physical disfigurement, turning Lautrec into a tormented outsider who is happiest when gulping brandies, and whose damnable anguish was inverted through his paint brush into an expression of beauty. Moulin Rouge is a grand re-enactment of Parisian cafe life; if only the subject had been rendered with finer strokes.-Steve Seid