Rating: 
Summary: A nice wholesome family movie
Review: Very enjoyable movie that easily deserves to be added to your home collection. Kirk Douglas underscores his brilliant acting talent to convince the audience of Vincent's lifelong struggles regarding his passion for painting. Outstanding quality VHS coupled with immediate shipment from Amazon made this inexpensive purchase most satisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: Van Gogh lives in "Lust for Life"
Review: Vicente Minelli and Kirk Douglas MAKE Van Gogh come alive in this 1956 biography. After reading several books on Van Gogh, and having travelled to Arles and St. Remi, I was able to appreciate the details reproduced in the film. The characters Vincent painted, the landscapes, Douglas, himsef - all "walked" off the canvas and into the film. It is sad that such work is not yet available on DVD. My hope is that enough people vote it to production, not only for the pleasure of individuals such as myself, but for schools as well.
Rating:
Summary: Starry Night
Review: With an uncanny resemblance to the self-portraits of Vincent Van Gogh, Kirk Douglas is perfect for this detailed and wonderful production of the artist's life; it's a passionate performance of a troubled soul, whose creative urges battled with his mental illness.
The film has an intelligent script by Norman Corwin, based on Irving Stone's biographical novel. It picks up the story around 1879, when Van Gogh was 26 years old, and went to minister (unsuccessfully) to the coal miners of a destitute area, and from there takes us through his many different abodes, his relationship with "Christine", who is well played by Pamela Brown, and the flourishing of his art in his last 15 years of life.The art direction is superb, and the recreations of the places Van Gogh painted a marvel, among them the famous yellow house he lived in and its bedroom, and my favorite, the pool hall, with its hanging lamps.
The cinematography by Freddy Young and Russell Harlan is terrific, and we get many full screen views of the original paintings, many of them lesser known pieces from private collections. This was a multi-award winning film, and garnered an Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Anthony Quinn, who is fabulous as Paul Gauguin, whose personality was the complete opposite of his friend Van Gogh; the ego clashes when they attempted to live together are well illustrated in several scenes, and with a little addition to his nose, Quinn has been made to look exactly like Gauguin's famous self-portrait with the snake.
James Donald is excellent as Vincent's patient and generous brother, who was Van Gogh's central means of support for most of his lifetime, both financially and of his paintings.
A tremendous knowledge about art went into this film, and it's one of the best artist biographies ever put to film (another good one also came from a Stone best seller, "The Agony and the Ecstasy"), and is a must-see for artists and anyone with an interest in Van Gogh's genius. Total running time is 122 minutes.
| 
