Lust for Life (1956) (nat)

I do love a van Gogh painting. This movie is just like one big van Gogh painting after another (though sadly not in the 1001 book--I watched this one Friday night but didn't post then). Lust for Life is the biopic of Vincent van Gogh played uncannily by Kirk Douglas (apparently he was the favorite for an Oscar but Yul Brenner won for The King and I). Anthony Quinn makes an appearance (and won an Ocsar) as Paul Gauguin. Unlike The Russian Ark, this movie incorporates the paintings to the benefit of both the paintings and the storyline. And the movie does a magnificent job of showing us the landscapes as van Gogh must have seen them--we see the colors he used, see the fields, the workers, the cafes, his bedroom, etc. in a way that doesn't mimic the paintings but brings them to life. The story of his life is a little ho hum. He goes mad but I would have liked a little more to the "why" of that devolution into insanity. The cutting off of the ear is also handled nicely; we don't see the cutting on camera and then for the rest of the narrative, we don't see that side of his head except when it was bandaged right after the incident. I would have also liked a bit more about the art community of the time. We get glimpses of the other artists and the beginning of the impressionist movement and we get Gauguin's maddening interaction with van Gogh but we don't see the movement from the art before impressionist painting and we only get a glimpse of the versions of impressionist art coming out--vague glimpses at Gauguin's work but nothing up close. But it is a good movie and Kirk Douglas is wonderful as van Gogh.