French Cancan

French Cancan (also known as Only the French Can) is a 1955 French-Italian musical film written and directed by Jean Renoir and starring Jean Gabin and Francoise Arnoul. Where Renoir's previous film Le Carosse d’or had celebrated the 18th-century Italian commedia dell’arte, this work is a homage to the Parisian café-concert of the 19th century with its popular singers and dancers. Visually, the film evokes the paintings of Edgar Degas and the Impressionists, including his own father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It also marked his return to France and to French cinema after an exile that began in 1940. It was shot at the Joinville Studios in Paris. The film's sets were designed by the art director Max Douy. Plot In Paris in the 1890s, Henri Danglard owns a night club where the star turn is a belly dance by his mistress Lola. Going after the show one night to an old-fashioned dance hall in Montmartre, he sees people doing the cancan together and is struck by the suppleness and charm of a young laundry girl called Nini. He persuades her to take dancing lessons for a new venture he is planning. As his club has failed and Lola has left him, his idea is to open another place with a troupe of glamorous girls performing the cancan. Naming it the Moulin Rouge, its opening night is a thunderous success. Cast