History Behind Moulin Rouge the Movie

Moulin Rouge It was 1899 in Paris, France, it was the time of the Bohemian Revolution, and it was the summer of love. Christian, played by Ewan McGregor, was a writer and came to Paris to experience this revolution and be surrounded by the artists, singers, and dancers of this new Bohemian world. Little did he know that he would experience something he had never felt before but always believed in: love. Moulin Rouge, directed by Baz Luhrmann, is an exquisite movie musical based off of a real life cabaret called Moulin Rouge in Montmartre. The movie tells the story of the love triangle between Christian, Satine aka the “Sparkling Diamond” of the Moulin Rouge, played by Nicole Kidman, and The Duke. Although Christian and Satine are fictional characters, the story includes real life characters such as Harold Zidler, the co-mastermind of the Moulin Rouge and Toulouse-Lautrec, a famous French artist. Moulin Rouge is a great look into what life was like back in Paris in 1900, but also adds in the love story between Christian and Satine to make for a great movie musical. In the beginning of the movie, Christian's optimistic love shines some light into Satine's dark materialistic reality. To make a living, Satine became a courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. She gets paid for making men believe what they want to believe, so she sells her body to make money. She mistakenly became attracted to Christian for his pure and optimistic belief in love. Seeing that Christian did not have a lot of money, she becomes hesitant of loving him because he would not be able to support her and her dreams of being an actress. With Christian's pure and optimistic belief of love, he captures Satine's heart by loving her for who she really is, not for what she is. Although Satine dies in the end of the movie, Christian learns that true love lasts forever even through death.
Harold Zidler, who is not a fictional character, is the man who helped to run the real Moulin Rouge cabaret. In the

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