Moulin Rouge - Opening Section
1
Quote: Curtains open to "Sound of
Music" theme tune, early C20 cinema screen revealed :"Twentieth
Century Fox Presents", sepia, Moulin Rouge motif, border around screen,
flickering. Continues with "Show Must Go On"
Explain: sepia = late C19 early C20 photos, flickering = early movies - font
= old-fashioned, art nouveau border and embellishment
Music: The Sound of Music - very successful in the early nineteen-sixties
- as recognisable as the C20 Fox logo: - using it in the twenty-first century
is a joke as it so clearly out of its time - another example of incongruity.
Note the difference of the effect of the music here and when Christian sings
it for the first time. Continues with "Show Must Go On", which makes
the beginning of the film like an overture - associations with Freddie Mercury
- a tragic bohemian ("Bohemian Rhapsody") who died early from STI.
Overture suggests we are about to see a performance - like an opera = something
full of spectacle and emotion - sets up expectations. Lively music of Can
Can suggests excitement, Show Must Go On = very theatrical, but also tragic.
