Lust for Life (1956)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor

Film Review

Irving Stone's meticulously researched biographical novel Lust for Life is unlikely to be mistaken for a great work of literature but it provides the most coherent, detailed and moving account of the life of the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh that has so far been committed to print.  It's a substantial tome that runs to over five hundred pages and covers the entire span of Van Gogh's adult life, from his time as a lowly employee at a leading film of art dealers to his tragic death in Auvers-sur-Oise.  How can one film hope to accomplish what Stone achieves in his compelling novel, which is to record Van Gogh's whole life (based on countless letters written by the artist to his devoted brother Théo) whilst venturing some profound insights into the man and his art?  The answer is of course that no one film can, but Vincente Minnelli's sumptuous biopic makes a reasonable job of distilling the essence of Van Gogh's life and art into one easily digestible package.  Like Stone's novel, Minnelli's film falls short of greatness but it is an insightful homage to one of the most enigmatic and inspired creative talents the human race has produced.

All of Vincente Minnelli's films are distinguished by the beauty and elegance of their composition and Lust for Life is no exception.  The most visually striking of Minnelli's films, its main selling point is how its design carefully mirrors the gradual progression in Van Gogh's painting style.  The early scenes adopt the sombre palette of the artist's Dutch forebears, a visual style dominated by oppressive browns and greys that seems particularly well-suited for the chapter depicting Van Gogh's stint as a missionary in a poor mining community.  As Van Gogh discovers his vocation in life and begins to paint in colour, so the look and tone of the film change to reflect this.  When the artists lands in sunny Arles and embarks on the busiest phase of his career the screen becomes overwhelmed with a blazing intensity of colour that attains a dizzying zenith when the artist surrenders himself to the beauty of the Provençal wheat fields.  Thereon, the mood progressively darkens - there is the same intensity of colour, but beneath it there is a growing sense of futility and despair.  Van Gogh's descent into insanity and resultant suicide have a terrible inevitability about them.

In the course of the film, the narrative pauses to give us a chance to feast our eyes on Van Gogh's now iconic paintings.  It is astonishing how close Van Gogh's compositions match the set design and characters that we see in the film.  Spookiest of all is Kirk Douglas's extraordinary resemblance to the artist himself.  To see Douglas and one of Van Gogh's famous self-portraits in the same shot you would never doubt that they were likenesses of the same person.  The same goes for Everett Sloane's Dr Gachet and Anthony Quinn's Paul Gauguin - the degree of visual authenticity exercised by Minnelli and his design team on this film is simply breathtaking.  Anyone who is familiar with Van Gogh's paintings risks being deluged by a sense of déjà-vu, so closely do Minnelli's flawlessly constructed tableaux match the original artworks that have become indelibly etched onto the conscientiousness of humanity - The Potato Eaters, The All Night Café, The Bedroom...  To see these familiar compositions as Van Gogh would himself have seen them and drawn inspiration from them is an intensely moving experience.

Douglas and Quinn are not only dead-ringers for the great men they play, they both turn in convincing portrayals of two diametrically opposed artists driven by the same all-consuming desire to express themselves and reveal the hidden poetry of nature through their art.  Quinn gets all the juiciest lines, and this might explain why he, not Douglas, ended up winning an Oscar.  After a languorous first half (which somehow manages to compress the first two-thirds of Stone's epic novel into one hour of runtime), the film suddenly comes to life when Van Gogh and Gauguin meet and embark on the most improbable of friendships.  Clearly, one artist who is motivated to paint what he sees with his eyes is unlikely to have a lasting relationship with another who prefers to daub what he sees with his mind, but it is the short-lived interplay between the two great post-impressionists that expresses all we need to know about either of them.

Quinn's swarthy, loud-mouthed, grunting earthiness is as redolent of Gauguin's proto-primitivist art as Douglas's tortured humanity is of the barely contained manic frenzy of Van Gogh's late masterpieces.  As impressive as the film is from a purely visual standpoint, you can't help wishing that Minnelli had been a little braver and delved more deeply into the problematic Van Gogh-Gauguin relationship, instead of making this one brief interlude in a horrendously cluttered and dramatically uneven biopic.  Lust for Life may lack the depth, immediacy and horrifying reality of Irving Stone's novel, but it achieves what no other Van Gogh biopic has so far accomplished, which is to connect the power and poetry of Van Gogh's art with the fractured, angst-ridden identity of the artist himself.  After watching this film, a reading of Stone's novel and a visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam are irresistible.

Film Synopsis

Driven by an overwhelming urge to achieve something worthwhile in his life, Vincent Van Gogh takes up the position of a preacher in a small mining town in the Borinage district of Belgium.  Vincent's well-meaning attempts to relieve the suffering of the miners and their families ends with him being relieved of his duties by the church authorities.  Returning to live with his family in a rural area of the Netherlands, Vincent discovers a passion for art and devotes himself to drawing whilst pursuing a doomed love affair with his cousin Kay.  When Kay rejects him, Vincent moves to the Hague where, under the tutelage of another cousin, the realist painter Anton Mauve, he teaches himself the rudiments of painting.  It is here that he cohabits with a laundry worker and occasional prostitute named Christine.  Whilst living for a time in Paris with his constantly supportive brother Théo, Vincent makes the acquaintance of several other radical young artists, including Paul Gauguin.  Lured to the south of France by the prospect of sun and rich colours, Vincent settles in the windy town of Arles, where he has ambitions of setting up a colony for artists.  Gauguin stays with him for a while but their association ends suddenly when Vincent mutilates himself after a violent row.  Increasingly prone to violent mood swings and seizures, Vincent agrees to have himself committed to an asylum in St-Rémy.  Only by painting will he regain his taste for living, his lust for life...