Lust for Life
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Movie Reviews of Lust for Life
Movie Review: A great film about Van Gogh
Summary: 5 Stars
Lust for Life based on Irving Stone's novel about Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was filmed in 1956 and directed by Vincente Minnelli. Kirk Douglas as Vincent crackles with intensity. He won a Golden Globe award for his portrayal; depicting Van Gogh's artistic growth, deep loneliness and inevitable descent into madness with sensitivity and pathos. It is a moving performance that, along with Spartacus and Paths of Glory, is one of his best. Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. James Donald is especially touching as Vincent's loving Brother Theo. The film features a powerful and poignant musical score by the great film and Classical Music composer Miklos Rozsa, composer of music for Ben-Hur, Double Indemnity, Ivanhoe and The Lost Weekend amongst many others. This film is, along with John Huston's Moulin Rouge made in 1952 about the life of Toulouse-Latrec, one of my favorite Hollywood films about an artist.
As soon as the titles appear on this recently released DVD you are aware of the superb transfer to disc. Written with Van Gogh's trademark thick impasto technique, they leap off the screen with 3-dimensional brilliance, breathtakingly alive. This is important because the film contains dozens of Van Gogh's most famous art works, all filmed from the originals in the possession of private collectors and museums. With their thick swirls of color and movement, the images are stunningly beautiful; making the DVD of the film a living art gallery. This was worth the price of the DVD for me. I wish there was some way each one of the paintings could have been bookmarked on the DVD to make them easier to find. Alas no. However, the other more disappointing aspect of this DVD release is that it does not contain the 30 minute long "Making of" documentary that often followed the showing of this film on Turner Classic Movies. This fine documentary showed how modern locations in Holland, Belgium and France were painstakingly converted into the late 19th Century locations actually painted by Van Gogh. It also showed how Kirk Douglas developed his characterization. It featured the process by which extras were chosen amongst local townspeople, including one old French woman who had actually known Van Gogh, had seen him paint and remarked upon Douglas' uncanny resemblance to the painter. It is a wonderful little film and its absence from this DVD is inexplicable. There is certainly room for it. The only extras are a 3 minute trailer and a fine commentary by Dr. Drew Casper, a film historian who gives a deeper, more academic analysis of the film than is usual for a commercial release not on Criterion or Kino. This was a missed opportunity by Turner Entertainment that makes no sense and is deeply disappointing.
The film is in color shot in widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 enhanced for widescreen TVs. It looks beautiful, almost 3-dimensionally vivid. It is 122 minutes in length. Sound is offered in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and sounds glorious. Miklos Rozsa's music sounds especially alive. Languages for menus are English and French. Subtitles are in English, French and Spanish. The region code is NTSC 1.
This is a film definitely worth getting for its beauty and its excellence. Its lack of appropriate extras is disappointing but that is tempered by gratitude for finally having this wonderful, deeply moving film available on DVD. I strongly recommend this DVD release for that fact alone.
Mike Birman
Movie Review: "I hope his soul is quieter than mine.."
Summary: 5 Stars
Critics lambasted Kirk Douglas' performance as "hammy". I don't see that at all. This is, without a doubt, the Vincent Van Gogh that we read in "Letters To Theo" miraculously brought to life.
As with Van Gogh's actual life, the whole thing has a kind of creaking bipolarity to it; he has periods of creative bliss, happiness and fulfillment, but they are too short and his almost unbearable intensity gets him into trouble too often with too many people who can help him. Anthony Quinn as Paul Gaughan would seem like a strange fit, but he pulls it off pretty well; you can feel the arguments crashing between them like thunderstorms, and Vincent's unwavering belief in their friendship is so innocent and enthusiastic that one cannot help but feel heartbroken when it ends so terribly. Douglas communicates vividly what we suspect about Van Gogh from reading his correspondences, and from his paintings; that he was far too visionary to ever really make it in the practical world, or overcome his restlessness long enough to allow his art to mature.
The beginning of the film more than any other sequence shows how violently alienated Van Gogh was from coteries and social mores. His doomed-from-the-start mission to be a minister ends ironically--he was too Christian for the Christians. While there is an explosion underground and poverty-stricken children die along with the very miner who introduced him to their real hellish existence, he is reprimanded by his spiritual "superiors" for dressing incorrectly. Van Gogh is so enraged by this that he screams just what he thinks at them, and loses all chance of another path in life.
And throughout the film he remains a Christian, but he is too much of a self-absorbed and passionate artist to always retain his ethics. Douglas' Van Gogh can stick with no situation or person very long: the only constant thread in his life is his passion for painting. Sometimes the performance is so good we can feel Van Gogh's landmine madness coarsing through the screen and even empathize with those who had to reject him because fiery nature could be really scary at times.
We get the chance to see Van Gogh's paintings in a way we never have before, which is probably the best part of this movie. That and his relationship with his long suffering brother Theo, played superbly by James Donald. He should have gotten the nomination for Best Supporting Actor, not Anthony Quinn, who turns in roughly the same performance in every movie and happened to get lucky with this one. Somewhere inside him he knows his brother is a genius, but he still has the flesh and blood Van Gogh to deal with financially and otherwise. The ending could not have been remotely as powerful as it is without him.
This film, despite concerning a man of titanic imagination, is also a good realistic attack on the myth of the tortured artist as something romantic and to be envied. Barring his moments of vision, Van Gogh's life was a hell of sorts and led him to a miserable death. This is nothing to envy or emulate and this movie communicates that. Still, beautifully done and must see for anyone who wants to understand one of the greatest painters to ever live.
Movie Review: Dramatic depiction of the artist's life
Summary: 5 Stars
Please note that I saw this movie on TV so I can't comment on the quality of the video transfer.
Van Gogh's troubled life is dramatically brought to the screen in one of Douglas's greatest roles. Douglas and Quinn are superb in this movie as the two ill-fated artist friends, and also James Donald is great as van Gogh's devoted brother. The movie follows van Gogh from his departure from divinity school and his ministerial work with the miners to his ultimate suicide. Van Gogh is shown as a man who is passionate about everything in his life--his religion, his art, and his women--often to the point of being out of control. But that's why van Gogh's story is still well known today, because he lived life on the edge in otherwise conservative, dreary, repressive Victorian society.
But although we're supposed to feel sorry for and empathize with the tragic van Gogh, interestingly he doesn't always make a very sympathetic character in this movie. For example, Gauguin praises van Gogh's paintings when no one else would, but in return van Gogh criticizes Gauguin's, setting the stage for another of their blow-ups. And when the woman he loves rejects him he refuses to accept it and tries to force his attentions on her.
Unfortunately, the two friends are direct opposites, so their friendship is doomed from the start. Gauguin can be arrogant and abrasive even with his friends, and so the volatile and sensitive van Gogh is soon at odds with his fellow roommate, but they are thrown together by circumstances and by their rejection of the uninspired French Academy art of the day.
Rejected by the art society of his day and often neglected even by his friends, fortunately van Gogh knew a few good people who helped him over the years. Pere Tanguy and Dr. Gachet were two of his admirers who were supportive, and of course his brother, who offered encouragement and supported him financially throughout his troubled life. And he is helped initially by his relative Mauve, an artist himself, who gives him materials to work with and some advice on how to proceed. The contrast between the successful and prosperous-looking Mauve's studio and van Gogh's poverty couldn't be more striking.
Several times people comment about how van Gogh and Gauguin started late and so the odds are against them just because of that. Interestingly, van Gogh, who had no formal art training, ended up developing a style that has more in common with the expressionism of forty years later than the Impressionists of his own time, with whom he is usually lumped. Considering how late they started, it's amazing van Gogh and Gauguin accomplished as much as they did.
The movie does a fine job of showing many of van Gogh's paintings. I'm assuming museum-quality reproductions were obtained for the filming, but I don't know for sure. I notice that one of the professional reviews says Minelli used an obsolete color process for the movie. I'd like to know more about that and how it affected the color.
Overall, a fine movie based on the Irving Stone novel. I'd also like to know what Stone thought of the movie, but I suspect he was pleased with how it turned out.
Movie Review: Dramatic depiction of the artist's life
Summary: 5 Stars
Van Gogh's troubled life is dramatically brought to the screen in in one of Douglas's greatest roles. Douglas and Quinn are superb in this movie as the two ill-fated artist friends, and also James Donald is great as van Gogh's devoted brother. The movie follows van Gogh from his departure from divinity school and his ministerial work with the miners to his ultimate suicide. Van Gogh is shown as a man who is passionate about everything in his life--his religion, his art, and his women--often to the point of being out of control. But that's why van Gogh's story is still well known today, because he lived life on the edge in otherwise conservative, dreary, repressive Victorian society.
We're supposed to feel sorry for and empathize with the tragic van Gogh, but he doesn't always make a very sympathetic character. Gauguin praises van Gogh's paintings when no one else would, but in return van Gogh criticizes Gauguin's, setting the stage for another of their blow-ups. And when the woman he loves rejects him he refuses to accept it and tries to force his attentions on her.
Unfortunately, the two friends are direct opposites, so their friendship is doomed from the start. Gauguin can be arrogant and abrasive even with his friends, and so van Gogh as a friend and roommate isn't exactly the best choice of a buddy, but they are thrown together by circumstances and by their rejection of the uninspired French Academy art of the day.
Van Gogh is depicted as a man who gets rejected and kicked around by just about everyone and everything in his life, with a few exceptions. Pere Tanguy and Dr. Gachet were two of his admirers who were supportive, and of course his brother, who supported him throughout his troubled life. And his is helped initially by his relative Mauve, who gives him materials to work with and some advice on how to proceed. Mention is made several times in the movie about how van Gogh and Gauguin started late and so the odds are against them just because of that.
The movie does a great job of showing many of van Gogh's paintings. I'm assuming museum-quality reproductions were obtained for the filming, but I don't know for sure. I notice that one of the professional reviews says Minelli used an obsolete color process for the movie. I'd like to know more about that and how it affected the color.
Overall, a fine movie based on the Irving Stone novel. I'd also like to know what Stone thought of the movie, but I suspect he was pleased with how it turned out.
Movie Review: Excellent Cinematic Portrait.
Summary: 5 Stars
Released theatrically in 1956, "Lust for Life" remains one of the finest films about an artist, in this case the great Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh. With his keen eye for colour, Vincente Minnelli was the ideal choice to direct this handsome film for MGM. Based on the best selling novel by Irving Stone, "Lust for Life" must have been a real treat to see on the big screen in all its Cinemascope and Metrocolor glory.
Vincent Van Gogh was, of course, the quintessential "tortured soul", who--after a brief but stormy career as a clergyman--found his true calling as an artist. We follow his life through his relationships with others--an overbearing, intolerant father--a generous, supportive brother (Theo)--a woman who spurns his love with a brutal finality--a poor, single mother, Christine, who for a time, offers him shelter from the "storms of life"--and, of course, other artists, most notably the volatile Paul Gauguin. While today Vincent's paintings sell for millions of dollars, and he is recognized as a genius, he did not enjoy monetary success in this lifetime. In fact, despite his love of creating art, he still had to battle serious psychological demons.
As Van Gogh, Kirk Douglas is brilliant--easily one of the finest performances of his long and distinguished career. Visually, Mr.Douglas is perfect, but he also really seems to inhabit the skin and the mind of Van Gogh. He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, and justifiably so (he lost to Yul Brynner in "THe King and I"). As Paul Gauguin, Anthony Quinn did win the best supporting Oscar with a role tailor-made for his ebullient, earthy persona. James Donald is fine as Theo, the long-suffering, ever-faithful brother. Pamela Brown as Christine and Henry Daniell as Vincent's autocratic father are both memorable in smaller roles.
Unlike at least one other reviewer, I found the widescreen, colour DVD picture to be gorgeous. The scenes where we see Vincent create some of his famous paintings--for example--"Wheat Field With Crows" are lovely. Many of his paintings from museums, galleries and private collections are woven into the story, or presented in a stunning collage at the end of the film. The Dolby Surround Stereo is effective for a film of this vintage. Extras are sparse--comments from film historian, Drew Casper, and a trailer.
"Lust for Life" is educational--an exceptionally well-acted drama--and a visual feast. Highly recommended.