Moulin Rouge: La Goulue popular French club, Moulin Rouge. Their audience is reduced to silhouettes in order to focus attention on the performers and evoke the Japanese art then in vogue. The triple repetition of the club's name draws the focus down to the central figure of the poster, La Goulue herself. The stark white of her petticoats, depicted with just a few lines on the white paper, epitomizes Toulouse-Lautrec's boldly simplistic style, a sharp break from the text-heavy posters of the day. The Moulin Rouge had opened two years earlier, in 1889, and instantly established itself as a Montmartre landmark. It was renowned
Moulin Rouge! (Reprise)"). The storyline of "Moulin Rouge" can be traced back to Alexandre Dumas, "fils"' "The Lady of the Camellias", although Luhrmann, as an opera director, was probably more directly influenced by Verdi's adaptation, "La traviata". When asked about his inspiration for "Moulin Rouge!", Luhrmann remarked: Luhrmann revealed that he drew from the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice in the DVD's audio commentary. The legend of Orpheus says he was a musical genius, far surpassing anyone in his world; the filmmakers chose to replicate this by using songs from the mid-to-late 20th century, many decades after the film's 1899 setting.