Vincent - La vie et la mort de Vincent Van Gogh (1987)

Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh is a documentary film by Australian director Paul Cox, exploring the last eight years of the artist's life. Cox was attracted to the project because of his personal admiration for Van Gogh:


I found him such a compassionate, wonderful human being. That attracted me above all. I found him always honest, always real, always doing his utmost, and I related very much to his type of loneliness. It's the loneliness, the dreadful loneliness that I've known all my life. That was still much stronger for me when I tried to become a film-maker - you know, up to 30, 35, I was terribly alone. I was not equipped for the world at all, and, at that level, that is a very similar background to Vincent.
The screen images consist of a wide selection of the paintings and sketches, shown in a chronological sequence, supplemented by shots of the locations he lived in, and a number of dramatised reconstructions of biographical events.

The voice-over narration by John Hurt employs the letters of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo.

The film was a popular hit on the art house circuit and ran for two years in New York.

Synopsis

La vie de Vincent Van Gogh nous est racontée à travers les lettres qu'il a écrites à son frère Théo de 1872 jusqu'à sa mort tragique. Grâce à ces documents, nous entrons dans l’intimité de l’artiste en découvrant l’homme, ses motivations et sa profonde humanité. A travers les propres mots de l’artiste, le film explore l’Europe que Vincent van Gogh a parcourue, les lieux de son inspiration, les couleurs qu’il a observées et les saisons qu’il a vécues, de Groot-Zundert, Nuenen, Le Borinage, La Haye à Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence et enfin Auvers-sur-Oise où il est décédé.

Acteurs