Initially the thought of Kirk Douglas playing Vincent van Gogh seems as unlikely as Al Pacino playing Arthur Scargill! And yet with a bravura performance of total immersion and commitment Douglas wins you over. Of course he seems too physical for the part and even the mandatory red hair and beard fails to convince the viewer of passable physical resemblance, unlike Anthony Quinn as Gaughin, but in a sustained start-to-finish portrayal of the downs and downs (there were very few ups) of the artist's life, you are quickly caught up in this tragic story of unrecognised tormented and ultimately doomed genius. It's almost as hard to believe that the suave purveyor of classic Hollywood musicals, Vincente Minelli, could pull off the directorial task with such aplomb, but with obvious love of the source material, countless opportunities to recreate the artist's masterpieces and most of all sympathy with the tortured artist, result in an accomplished end product filmed in glorious colour. Is it too obvious to draw a parallel between Van Gogh and Minelli's own flawed genius of a wife Judy Garland, similarly destined to die tragically young? Whether yes or no, this is serious Hollywood film - making at its grandest. The playing is very good, despite the jarring of Anglo-American accents - it's not long into the movie before Douglas exhorts Almatty Gahd - but the narrative stays true to the artist's life-story, quoting from Van Gogh's own letters, relayed in the third person by his devoted brother Theo, until his ultimate unhappy ending at his own hand. The sparks really fly too in the Quinn / Douglas scenes where Gaughin and Van Gogh attempt their short-lived joint home-making exercise where the artistic arguments between two temperamental individuals are convincingly and sensitively laid before the laymen viewers. Interesting to note the likes of actors Max Jaffe and Edward G Robinson in the list of donors of original works at the movie's conclusion.
Review of Lust for Life
