A touch of hysteria was always keynote in the non-musical films of
Vincente Minnelli , the melodramas, and it worked in the pure fictions,
(SOME CAME RUNNING and THE COBWEB for example), but in the one film
where it should have worked, where it was integral to the subject at
hand, it felt incongruous. LUST FOR LIFE was Minnelli's much praised
biography of Vincent Van Gogh and indeed there are things in this film
to admire, (it looks astonishing; the recreations of the paintings and
the use of the real paintings themselves certainly add to the picture),
but it's aimed at such a pitch of hysteria from the outset it feels
almost like a parody of a movie about a tortured artist. In place of
proper 'dialogue' we have speeches on the nature of art while Kirk Douglas makes Van Gogh into a clodhopper of an American philistine. On the other hand, given the script, both James Donald as Theo and Anthony Quinn as Gauguin aren't half-bad, (Quinn surprisingly won an Oscar for his contribution), but the film isn't a success. I am still astonished at its reputation among serious critics.
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