Jean Renoir directs this musical comedy drama set amidst the glittering nightlife of late 19th-century Paris. Jean Gabin stars as theatre impresario Henri Danglard, who plans to base his new club - the Moulin Rouge - around a modern reinvention of traditional cancan dancing. To this end, he hires pretty young washerwoman Nini (Francoise Arnoul) with a view to harnessing her natural talents and making her the star of the show. But Henri's attentions to Nini soon ignite the jealousy of his bellydancer lover Lola (Maria Felix).

Edith Piaf's life is almost as famous as her work. From her birth (which she liked to tell people was in the Parisian streets, her mother shielded by two gendarmes) to her death (when her husband allegedly drove her corpse from the Cannes hospital where she died to her flat, lest her fans think that she had abandoned Paris) her life story was a rags-to-riches tale like no other. A street singer discovered by the nightclub owner who gave her the stage name Piaf (Sparrow), she rose to become a national heroine. Friends with Charlie Chaplin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jean Cocteau, Maurice Chevalier, and Marlene Dietrich, she was also at various times chief suspect for the murder of her mentor, an alcoholic and a drug addict. But she always seemed to embody, and still does, something of the spirit of Paris. Following her death in 1963, 40,000 people descended on Pere Lachaise Cemetery for her funeral, and, 40 years on, millions remain fans of her music.