José Ferrer, Moulin Rouge

Bravado was what made José Ferrer's performance in Cyrano de Bergerac so compelling to me, but not a lick of it is to be found in Moulin Rouge. However, the body disfigurement - and therefore, Oscar-baity "grotesqueness," if you will - is still there, this time child-sized legs on a grown man instead of an aggressively large nose.

It's interesting, with the thought of Cyrano still firmly on the mind, to see such a subdued Ferrer - he is the owner of a voice that is so deep and rich, one that practically begs to be bellowed to the back rows of a theater. With every word that Ferrer speaks in Moulin Rouge, it seems as though he's trying his very best to pull it back a few notches, so as to not disturb the high-level message that this is a  "very pitiable" man.

I make a point about Ferrer's voice and the bravado he brings to Cyrano because I believe that - in spite of what you might think about his Oscar-winning turn - there is an undisputed passion that drives that performance forward. Not so much with Moulin Rouge.

His Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is about as filled to the brim with "baggage" as a character could get - a cripple, an alcoholic, an embarrassment to his family name, a self-hating and lonely and insecure man hungry for love unfound - and yet the performance Ferrer delivers on screen does not translate as one that's as complicated as the written character. In fact, it's quite straight-forward and kind of dull to watch. It would seem as though Ferrer interprets all of these qualities in his performance via a series of somber, exhausted stares at or beyond the camera.

This is a mostly internalized performance (as it should be), yet there isn't much passion to be seen in his face or through his line delivery. He needn't be vocally audacious by way of Cyrano of course, but for a character that demands your pity, there isn't much here to be felt. I didn't feel bad for him - I just didn't really care altogether.