Lust for Life (1956)

To honor the late Kirk Douglas (again), I selected one of his most popular movies that I hadn't seen yet. Only after it arrived did I realize that it was about Vincent Van Gogh, a notoriously unhappy soul who died of violence, making this my most questionable postmortem viewing since The Fisher King in the wake of Robin Williams. Then again, Douglas did tend to play unhappy souls, many of whom died of violence, so maybe this was appropriate.

The story begins with Vincent's attempt to follow in his father's Dutch Reformed ministerial footsteps. In tending poor miner families at considerable cost to himself, he garners the ironic scorn of clerical elders. Alas, he decides it's not the life for him, and after discovering Impressionism, he decides to jump on the Post-Impressionist bandwagon. Drawing and later painting seem to him the only fulfilling experiences, but not consistently. As a then-little-known novice, he needs the support of brother Theo (James Donald), cousin-in-law Anton Mauve (Noel Purcell), and postman Joseph Roulin (Niall MacGinnis) to make ends meet.

One of Vincent's problems is a lack of social skills. His heavy-handed courtship of cousin Cornelia (Jeanette Sterke) almost instantly turns her off for good. He has better luck winning over Christine (Pamela Brown), a single mother, but his obsession with art gets in the way of everything else, so she leaves and apparently returns to prostitution. His undepicted fight with Anton cuts off revenue, and Theo can barely stand having him around.

Vincent finally seems to have a true friend in the second half when fellow Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin (Anthony Quinn, winning an Oscar) moves in. But despite coming from the same "school," they turn out to have very different outlooks on both art and life. Paul is a lot more shamelessly amoral, sort of an Ernest Hemingway type, and hates the vibrant colors Vincent uses to convey emotion, for instance. It is after a falling-out with Paul that Vincent goes beyond mere neurosis and performs that signature facial self-mutilation (off camera, but possibly the first time I've seen blood in Technicolor).

I take some interest in seeing how attitudes have changed. We tend to look fondly or at worst neutrally back at Impressionists, but some contemporary critics made it out to be the equivalent of dubstep or something. Many names I've seen in museums (nice to learn more about them) were far from sacrosanct, so Vincent actually had good company that way. On an uglier note, dozens of villagers gather around his house to laugh at him while he's bedridden from the aforementioned injury. I can hardly picture that today.

I'm having trouble determining how faithful the film is to history. It is reportedly quite faithful to the book by the same title. We are not left to doubt that Vincent shot himself.

LfL may not have given the world anything really new, but it is a worthy production for portraying the ultimate tortured artist. It's also a worthy showcase for the talent of Kirk Douglas.