United States, 1956
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
With: Kirk Douglas (Vincent Van Gogh), James Donald (Théo Van Gogh), Anthony Quinn (Paul Gauguin)
The movie narrates the life of Dutch-born painter Vincent Van Gogh from 1879, when he is minister in the mining towns of the South of Belgium, to his death in 1890, aged 37, near Paris. Thus, it spans his entire artistic career, from his drawings of the Borinage working class to his celebrated canvas showing ravens flying over corn fields. There is room to quibble, as sticklers for accuracy would easily find mistaken developments (for instance, it is in fact two years after he had a passionate crush for his cousin Kate that he has his studio installed at his parents’ home; in another instance, he attempts to kill Paul Gauguin at their home and not in the street, before cutting off his ear, which is the left one and not the right, and giving it to a prostitute, an anecdote left off-screen). Need for clarity and vigor on the screen could obviously explain short cuts and simplifications. What is more interesting than academic hair-splitting, for the audience, is the vision of the man the movie wishes to convey.
A lust for life: the title gives a clue to what drives Van Gogh, but it calls for accuracy. Passion for relationship is never lacking, from his high hopes on his cousin to his dreams of an artists’ fraternity. But a stronger urge is to make paintings and drawings intrinsically carrying the full, vital, strength of the people’s life and feelings and even of the nature they live in. The need to draw first appears in the midst of despair and misery, as a testimony to the daily life of the working class the young minister is supposed to lead but can’t in the face of distrust born out of harsh conditions and full awareness of inequality. Van Gogh’s willingness to share in a concrete way and on canvas the life of the humblest is attentively recorded. It is hard to understand for his father and others but his artistic zeal is encouraged by his brother Théo who convinces him to go to Paris.
This is the place where Van Gogh widens his perspective as he gets in touch with the Impressionists and other talents, like Georges Seurat or Gauguin. Color becomes an obsession and so does the rendition of nature. It leads him to a tour in the South and the shambolic collaboration with Gauguin. In their quarrels Van Gogh claims his desire for an art based on emotion and nature, getting under the skin of Gauguin who thinks all art is abstract creation.
But lurking in Van Gogh’s struggle to achieve his aim is a measure of folly. His obsession with getting works reaching perfection wears his body and his mind off. Torment over his difficulty to relate to people and his doubt about art drives him to mad acts. Feverish work and existential anguish seem to fatefully getting along. People around him can’t understand him once again, and medical care is the only way to stay alive, though not for long. The lust for what he wants to see as life consumes him.
It holds water, as the narrative is neither an easy caricature nor a far-fetched commentary; it stands away from psycho-babble while striving to sound as realistic as possible. The relative success owes a lot to the dedication of Kirk Douglas, whose fiery performance runs unabated and resolute all along. He passionately expresses the hopes of the painter and puts all his strength and craft to render the moments of deep enthusiasm as well the spells of sheer despair. The supporting cast rises to the occasion, with James Donald playing a Théo Van Gogh tenderly attached to his brother and with a bigger-than-life Anthony Quinn who makes Gauguin a forceful antithesis to Van Gogh. For his part, Vincente Minnelli, one of those directors keenly aware of the beauty of colors on a screen, finds ways to serve the actor’s inspiration with visual inventions of his own and an astonishingly elegant sense of colors and compositions. Pictures of real paintings regularly appear to complete the shots and at the end are gathered to make a mosaic, a definitive legacy to a man of passion.