Hollywood has trouble dealing with artists, no doubt because of the virtual impossibility of externalizing the mental processes that produce the art. Since thought cannot be made material and even its physical expression through musical performance, or skillful handling of a brush, or tapping away at typewriters does little to demonstrate the why and how of artistic creation. To get around this limitation, filmmakers inevitably choose to make drama of the psychic lives of a slice of humanity synonymous with difficult, even aberrant personalities. The results rarely satisfy.
An expensive, widescreen film about Vincent van Gogh (Kirk Douglas), Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life, based on a novel by Irving Stone, takes the artist’s historical importance as a given to concentrate on his emotional upheavals in the pursuit of his vision. In other words, it uncritically accepts the Romantic cliché of the suffering, misunderstood genius. That van Gogh is all too well suited to such a melodramatic portrayal guarantees that objective examination of his art takes a back seat to histrionics.
As if to prove that intention, just about every scene is staged as a shouting match more appropriate to the stage than to cinematic intimacy, particularly when Gauguin (Anthony Quinn) appears. Douglas is hopeless, but it is hard to imagine another actor being much better. With the script yanking van Gogh from one emotional calamity to another, Douglas’s explosions are like someone slamming a piano over and over again as loudly as possible. (Miklos Rozsa’s overwrought musical accompaniment makes that almost literally true.) Douglas is not just unconvincing as Vincent van Gogh, he’s unbelievable as a functioning human being. That may have been intentional, but it’s not a terribly attractive conception and does nothing to explain why we should care about the results of his suffering.
Considerable effort is made to bring the era to life and things at least look good. Photographed by Freddie Young in gorgeous Technicolor, the film is sumptuously designed down to every corner of the Cinemascope frame. Name-dropping references to van Gogh’s contemporaries (a little Seurat here, some Degas there, Pissarro for breakfast, and maybe some Signac with your absinthe?) underline the place and time. Many of van Gogh’s original paintings are included, although sporadic efforts to link some to events in the film feel arbitrary and contrived. The documentary inserts are rendered by first-rate technicians, but they demonstrate little thought about how best to frame the paintings or how long they should be on the screen to reveal what is “great” about them.
Without critical historical evaluation, is van Gogh’s reputation sufficient to sustain attention to such an unattractive person? It may be a lot to ask for emotional distance in an expensive costume film, and Lust for Life was made with obviously good intentions by talented people. The lush sympathy cushioning the action is not enough, however, to turn two hours with van Gogh into much more than a barely bearable chore.
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