Film Review
In the late 1940s, emerging film auteur Alain Resnais first came to
prominence with this innovative short film which recounts the life of
post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh through his own work.
The film put Resnais on the map, earning him an Academy Award in 1950 for the
Best Short Subject, and it anticipates some of his later, more substantial
work in its use of camera motion, slow dissolves and rapid
editing.
Van Gogh was
one of a series of short films about celebrated French artists that
Resnais made at the start of his career. Others include
Portrait d'Henri Goetz (1947),
Malfray (1948) and
Gauguin (1950). Resnais would
employ some of the techniques and stylistic motifs he developed for
these films on later works, most notably his early masterpiece
Guernica
(1950).
The first thing to say about Resnais's
Van Gogh is that it is not an
authoritative, or even accurate account of the painter's life.
What the film presents is a highly simplified version of events, as you
would find in a child's encyclopaedia, more myth than reality.
Van Gogh's early life is omitted altogether, with the film
concentrating on the final turbulent six years of his life, the time he
was active as a painter. Whilst the naivety of its biographical
content diminishes the film's credibility as a documentary piece it
does not lessen its artistic value, nor its emotional impact. The film's worth lies in the
imaginative and moving way that Resnais presents Van Gogh's tortured
spiritual journey through a labrythine montage constructed from
fragments of the painter's work.
Given that Van Gogh is renowned for his dazzling use of colour, it is
perhaps surprising that Resnais chose to make this film in black and
white (presumably the choice was dictated more by financial
necessity than artistic whim). We can only guess at how much more
potent the film would have been if Resnais had shot it in colour, but
there is no point wishing for things we know we cannot have. In
lustrous monochrome, the film is still pretty mesmerising. The
pace of editing and the tone of the composition are carefully
engineered to create a sense of Van Gogh's wild mood swings, taking us
to dizzying heights as the artist reaches his creative peak during his
frenzied period in Provence. Jacques Besse's score adds to the
film's expressionistic power, with unsettling dark undertones that hint
at the destructive tendencies which are propelling Van Gogh to his
doom. Despite its glaring factual inaccuracies,
Van Gogh is a superlative art film,
one that distils the essence of the man and his art into a film that is
both visually compelling and emotionally troubling.
© James Travers 2014
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Next Alain Resnais film:
Guernica (1950)
Film Synopsis
Today, Vincent Van Gogh is considered one of the most important artists in
western culture. His output was phenomenal and he leaves behind an
impressive body of work that includes over eight hundred oil paintings.
But in his day, he was completely unknown and spent his productive years
as an artist in almost abject poverty, battling against mental illness as
he sought to express himself through the art that had become his sole reason
for existing. Vincent only began painting in his early thirties, having
failed as both an art dealer and a Protestant missionary. It was in
the dreary Dutch town of Nuenen that he discovered his art. He expressed
his close affinity for others through his sketches and paintings of ordinary
folk, most famously his 1885 work
The Potato Eaters.
In 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris and soon fell in with others who were keen
to develop a radically new form of pictorial art. These included two
other leading figures of the post-impressionist movement: Paul Gauguin and
Georges Seurat. The thronging streets and grey skies of Paris did not
seem to accord with Vincent's inner mood, so he headed south, and like a
flower suddenly exposed to the sun's life-nourishing rays, his art began
to flourish, blazing with its own unique vitality. It was during his
stay in Arles that Vincent painted some of his best-known works, stunning
landscapes, vivid still lifes and gently comical portraits, all burning with
that ineffable passion that had taken possession of the artist.
But then, just as he had reached the pinnacle of his art, Vincent's mental
health took a dramatic turn for the worse. In a moment of madness,
he sliced off a part of his own ear. Not long afterwards, fearing he
was going mad, he allowed himself to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
He continued to paint, his changing moods reflected in his increasingly dramatic
landscapes. Apparently recovered, Vincent settled in the quiet town
of Auvers-sur-Oise just outside Paris, and once again his art flourished.
But, despite his renewed zest for living, his demons would not leave him
in peace. On 27th July 1890, the pain of living had become so unbearable
that Vincent decided to kill himself...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.