Lust for Life (1956)

Kirk Douglas: Vincent Van Gogh

Photos 

8 more photos

Quotes 

• Paul Gauguin : I'm talking about women, man. Women. I like 'em fat and vicious and not too smart. Nothing spiritual either. To have to say 'I love you' would break my teeth. I don't want to be loved.

  Vincent Van Gogh : You really mean that, Paul.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Please don't go. You don't know how alone feels!

  Paul Gauguin : I know about loneliness! Only I don't whine about it!

• Paul Gauguin : With all your talk of emotion, all I see when I look at your work is just that you paint too fast!

  Vincent Van Gogh : You look too fast!

• Vincent Van Gogh : If I'm to be anything as a painter, I've got to break through the iron wall between what I feel and what I can express. And my best chance of doing it is here, where my roots are, the people I know, the earth I know.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Look Paul, when I painted the night cafe, I tried to show evil: the most violent passions of humanity.

  [begins drawing on the table at which he and Paul are sitting around at the cafe] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : I painted it blood red, dark yellow, the green billiard table in the middle, four lemon yellow lamps with a glare of orange and green, and an atmosphere of pale yellow sulfur like a frenzy. I tried to show a place where a man can ruin himself... go mad... commit a crime.

  Paul Gauguin : What's all of this talk about Arlesian women? I haven't seen a good one yet.

  Vincent Van Gogh : They must have heard you were coming and they locked them up.

• Theo Van Gogh : Hiding away here. Wasting you're time. You've become an idler.

  Vincent Van Gogh : An idler. Yes. But there are two kinds of idlers. There's the man who's idle because he wants to be, out of laziness. How easy that is. I envy him. But, there's the other kind. The man who's idle in spite of himself. I want nothing *but* to work. Only, I can't. I'm in a cage. A cage of shame and self-doubt and failure. Somebody, believe me, I'm caged. I'm caged and I'm alone. I'm frightened.

  Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, listen to me. When we were children, I used to follow you about. If I was frightened, I'd run to look for you. If I got lost, you'd always come to find me. We're still brothers. We're friends. We can trust one another. That's stronger than any cage.

• Vincent Van Gogh : When I paint the sun, I want people to feel it revolving, giving off light and heat.

• Vincent Van Gogh : What do you paint, then?

  Paul Gauguin : What's in my head. Art's an abstraction, not a picture book. A painting is a flat surface covered with lines and colors arranged in a certain order.

  Vincent Van Gogh : But Theo - I mean, Paul, what about the arrangement that exists in nature?

  Paul Gauguin : I choose to disregard nature.

• Vincent Van Gogh : [In letter]  Dear Theo, You were right. It's so good to be home, to live in peace for a time. Once again, thanks to you, life seems precious to me - something to be valued and loved. Once again I'm working. You know how for years, whenever I saw anything that moved me, I felt the need to draw it: to get it down on paper, no matter how crudely. Now for the first time, I've begun to wonder - could this be the way for me? A man or woman at work; some furrows in a plowed field; a bit of sand, sea, or sky - these are subjects so difficult, and at the same time so beautiful, that's it worth spending one's whole life trying to capture the poetry that's hidden in them.

• Theo Van Gogh : [approaches Vincent's hospital bed and sits down]  Vincent, I've just been with Dr. Rey. You're doing very well, and quite soon you'll be able to travel. Johanna and I want you to...

  Vincent Van Gogh : [interrupts]  Theo, I want to have myself committed. I want to go to an asylum. I have to Theo. Anymore of these attacks could leave me helpless, like a crab on its back, unable even to do away with myself.

  Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, you could come and live with us in Paris and have a reasonable life. You'll see that none of this ever happens again.

  Vincent Van Gogh : How, Theo? Will you and Johanna take turns watching me? Make sure the symptoms aren't coming back? When your baby's born... I'm a danger to others. I'm a danger to myself. Believe me, I'll be better off in an asylum.

  Theo Van Gogh : Vincent don't, you mustn't think like that.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Find a place for me to go, please.

  [smiles and grabs Theo's hand] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : I want to be sane. It won't be for long, just long enough for me to find a little order in my life; a little peace.

  [the scene fades out] 

• Christine : Vincent, I won't be there when you get back.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Don't say that...

  Christine : I didn't want to tell you, but I've been feeling restless, and besides, my mother's right. You don't earn enough for me and the baby.

  Vincent Van Gogh : This is no time to...

  Christine : You'll forget about us once you get home. It won't be hard.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Where will you go? How will you live?

  Christine : It'll be the old life, I suppose. Vincent, it's not your fault. You've been good. Nobody's ever been so good to me. And the baby, just as if he were your own.

• Vincent Van Gogh : [In letter]  Please Theo, send more paper and drawing ink. I'm afraid I quickly used up what you sent last month. As I work at my drawings day after day, what seemed unattainable before is now gradually becoming possible. Slowly I'm learning to observe and measure. I'd don't stand quite so helpless before nature any longer. I know there's still something harsh and stiff in my style, although to tell the truth, I believe the presence of Kay here this summer is beginning to have a softening influence on my work.

• Paul Gauguin : [satirically]  Hey Vincent! Look

  [points to a painting on the wall in the cafe/bar] 

  Paul Gauguin : , a masterpiece, straight from the salon. See? 'Symbolism'.

  [they laugh] 

  Paul Gauguin : Huh, better setup in here before the Louvre grabs it.

  [Vincent introduces him to Rachael and he sits down with them at the table] 

  Paul Gauguin : Haha... oh Vincent, why do I do it? Now here I pride myself on my sense of logic and order, and inside I'm a savage. I have this, th-this attraction to violence.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Violence makes me sick. I have too much inside me, I'm afraid of it.

  Paul Gauguin : Ah, that's why I let it out before it hurts me.

  [takes a drink and snickers] 

  Paul Gauguin : Last winter in Martinique, I got into a fight with some sailors. I was in the hospital for a month

  [chuckles] 

  Paul Gauguin : ... but it was worth it. Even that piddling brawl out there made me feel better than I have in weeks. And I know why: because suddenly there's something in front of you, something you can hit at. He stands there, you smash his teeth in, or he does it to you - either way it's alright: there's a *decision*.

• Vincent Van Gogh : [grabs worker's arm]  Uh, help me, help me to understand you people - to know you. Uh, take me to your homes where you live.

  Undetermined Role : We don't live here, we only come here to sleep. Down there

  [points down with his pipe] 

  Undetermined Role : , two thousand feet under ground - that's where we live.

• Vincent Van Gogh : What is it that came between father and me? Why couldn't I have shown him a little more consideration, given him some pleasure while he was alive? It wouldn't have hurt me to come to his church once in awhile.

  Theo Van Gogh : We always assume there's time, and that we can give love on our own terms. Then one day we wake up and find that it's too late to give it on any terms.

• [last lines] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : I acted like a joke with this whole sorry business if it wasn't for the trouble I've caused you. At least if you'd gotten back the cost of paint and the canvasses.

  Theo Van Gogh : It doesn't matter.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Is the baby really better?

  Theo Van Gogh : Huh, yes. We were worried about nothing, h-h-he was just teething, that was all.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I hope he has a quieter soul than mine. And mine's sinking... sinking... Theo, Theo... I'd like to go home...

  [lets go of his pipe as he passes away] 

  Theo Van Gogh : [takes Vincent's pipe, gets choked up, and leans on his brother in grief]  My own brother; my poor, poor brother.

  [scene fades out] 

  Sister Clothilde : [camera zooms out on his painting Wheat Field Behind Saint-Paul Hospital with a Reaper and closes the movie with a recount of a prior poignant conversation held about the piece]  It doesn't seem a sad death.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Oh it's not Sister. Happens in a bright daylight, the sun flooding everything in a light of pure gold.

  [the End and credits] 

• Vincent Van Gogh : I don't care to be respected! I'm trying to live like a *true* Christian. I'm not going to worry about how I sleep. Look at the fresh graves of the children in the cemetery. Scrub floors and pick coal with the women. Get those fine clothes dirty with the blood and sweat of dying miners. Then come here and lecture me about Christianity! Hypocrites. Hypocrites!

• Vincent Van Gogh : I act out of my beliefs, Father. Not because I want to please the village. I happen not to believe in the God or the clergymen. For me, he's as dead as a doornail.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I must say what I feel. I'm not an atheist. I do believe in God. A God of love, Father, and I believe there are many ways to serve him. One man does it from a pulpit, another through a book or a painting.

• Vincent Van Gogh : [In letter]  The clergymen would call us sinners. Is it a sin to love, Theo, to be in need of love? Not to be able to live without love?

• Anton Mauve : What kind of an artist do you want to be?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I want to create things that touch people. I want to move them so they say, "He feels deeply and tenderly."

• Vincent Van Gogh : I don't want control! I'm not afraid of emotion. When I paint the sun, I want the people to feel it revolving, giving off light and heat. When I paint a peasant, I want to feel the sun pouring into him like it does into the corn.

  Paul Gauguin : Is that what you do when you overload your brush? When you slap paint on like putty? When you make your trees writhe like snakes and your sun explode all over the canvas? What I see when I look at your work is that you paint too fast!

  Vincent Van Gogh : You look too fast!

  Paul Gauguin : Whatever you say, brigadier. Maybe you're right. Maybe we need another drink.

• Vincent Van Gogh : The heart that seeks God has more storms than any others. Life is a struggle here below, yet out of our... out of our sufferings, God teaches us higher things. He wills...

  [interrupted by a miner coughing] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : He wills that man should live humbly, and go through life not reaching after lofty aims, but fitting himself to the lowly, and learning from the gospels to be meek, simple of heart.

  [the miner leaves, Vincent sighs disappointedly] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : Father, we pray to thee to keep us from evil and despair. Feed us with the bread which does not perish, which is thy word. O Lord, amen.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Theo is leaving.

  Roulin : What?

  Vincent Van Gogh : No, it's good news. He's getting married.

  Roulin : That's wonderful! Let's go right back and celebrate.

  [Vincent says nothing] 

  Roulin : Um, do you know the girl?

  [Vincent shakes his head] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : She's a Dutch girl. Theo's going to Holland this weekend to meet her family. Mother will be happy. She's always wanted one of us to get married, and...

  Roulin : When you write your brother, wish him well from me and my family.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes, yes, I will.

• Johanna : Vincent!

  Vincent Van Gogh : Hello, Johanna, it's good to see you.

  Johanna : It's about time.

  Vincent Van Gogh : You're just as pretty as I thought you'd be.

  Johanna : Don't you think he looks well, Theo?

  Theo Van Gogh : He looks better than I do.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Where's the baby? When I do get to see him?

  Johanna : He's asleep, but since he's your namesake, you can go in.

• Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, what have you done to yourself? What's happened to you?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I was sick for a while, but I'm all right now.

  Theo Van Gogh : Doesn't anyone look after you? I'd better go and get you some food.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Don't go, Theo, stay and talk.

  Theo Van Gogh : Where's the nearest place where I can...

  Vincent Van Gogh : Please don't go, Theo. It's been such a long time.

• Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, what are we going to do about you? Father wrote and ask me to come find you. For months he's not heard from you.

  Vincent Van Gogh : There's nothing to tell.

  Theo Van Gogh : What right have you to decide that? You cut yourself off from everybody, even from me.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Would you be able to sell this?

  Theo Van Gogh : I'll try. It's hard to sell any of the new painters, even those with some sort of name. You know how Goupil's begrudges me the little space I can get for them.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Then why don't you leave Goupil's, set up for yourself? Why waste time with idiots like that?

  Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, don't tell me how to run my life!

• Rev. Peeters : Your father is a minister, is he not?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I'm not trying to put myself on a level with my father, I only hoped i-i-in some way to, t-to follow in his footsteps.

  Rev. Peeters : Yet until a year ago you showed no inclination or desire to follow your father's calling.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Believe me this is something I *have* to do. I want to help the unfortunates. I want to bring them the word of God. Even if I'm not qualified there must be some way I can serve. Isn't there any place for me, somewhere no one else wants to go? I'll do anything, only use me. *Use me*!

• Vincent Van Gogh : [In letter]  Dear Theo, Thank you for the money, and the paints and canvas. With your help I go forward. I feel the force to work growing daily within me. Do you realize Theo that what I'm doing is new. In the paintings of the old masters, did you ever see a single man or woman at work? Did they ever try to paint a laborer or a man digging? They didn't, and for good reason: because work is so hard to draw... To paint these people means to be with them in the fields day after day, and by their firesides at night. Since the rains came I've become absorbed in the weavers. They make such good subjects; the old oak wood darkened by the sweat of hands, and the shadow of the looms on the gray mud walls. All these months I've been trying to find a pattern; trying not so much to draw hands as gestures, not so much faces as the expressions of people - men and women who know the meaning of toil. I want to make clear that these people - sitting round a meal of potatoes in the evening - have turned the soil with the very hands they put in the dish, that they have honestly earned their food. I want to paint something that smells of bacon, smoke, and steam; something that's the good dark color of our Dutch earth.

• Paul Gauguin : How long have you been in Paris?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Over a year.

  Paul Gauguin : How can you stand it? I can't work here. It *strangles* me.

  Vincent Van Gogh : But where would you go?

  Paul Gauguin : Brittany. There's a place up there I can stay. It's just a hole, but it's all I can afford.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Wouldn't you miss your friends in Paris?

  Paul Gauguin : Friends? A woman or two maybe. When you start as late as I did you find yourself measuing who and what you give your time to. Friends, comforts, family - if they interfere with your peace to work you cut them off. And you spend the rest of your life wondering if it was worthwhile.

• Emile Bernard : Everything you've been doing - what we've all been doing - obsolete, the whole lot of it. Guessing with every brush stroke, pouring rivers of paint into haphazard combinations, but actually everything we're after can be achieved mathamatically.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Oh what are you talking about, Seurat again? You really think a painting can be done by formula?

  Emile Bernard : Can be? Is being done, right here in Paris; through precise, scientific methods.

  [scene fades to Seurat's studio] 

  Seurat : [while working on his famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte]  I don't mix my colors on canvas. I mix them in the eye of the spectator. Once you accept the phenomenon of the duration of life and the human race...

  [interrupted by Van Gogh] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : Excuse me, but this is a summit exterior. Now why do you paint it indoors by gaslight? I mean how can you judge your colors?

  Seurat : Hahaha, by not.

  Emile Bernard : Haha, come on Seurat, put him out of his misery. I've tried, but he's still in vice.

  Seurat : Alright Bernard, come here Mr. Van Gogh.

  [Vincent approaches the painting up close] 

  Seurat : Everyrhing I do is worked out in advance, with mathematical accuracies through precise scientific methods. I know exactly what colors I'm going to use before I pick up my brushes, and my palette is methodically prepared in the order of the spectrum. As you see: blue, blue-violet, violet-red, red, red-orange, orange-yellow, yellow, yellow-green...

  [scene fades out] 

• Vincent Van Gogh : [In letter]  A house Theo, I've found a house; a place of my own where I can work without trouble, and where there's plenty of room. Brunner lent me a mattress to get started and I bought some chairs and a bed and few other things that were necessary. With this, and with what I spent on paints and canvas, my money for the month is almost gone - but it was worth it. Oh Theo, you'd like this house. It's yellow on the outside and filled with sunshine. Later, two could live in it. One day perhaps Gaugin will come, and then who knows, this might turn into a colony of painters. I'm up at dawn and out on the road. Now that summer's begun it's all very different here from what it was in the spring, but I love it even more. Everywhere is old gold, bronze, and copper. I wish you could see these lovely days here Theo, but if not, you shall see pictures of them, for these colors give me an extraordinary exaltation. The whole earth is glowing under the southern sun - lemon yellow, sulfur yellow, greenish yellow - all under a sky blanched with heat. What a country it is. It absorbs me so much that I let myself go, never thinking of a single rule. I have no doubts, no limitations. I'm working like a steam engine; devouring paints, burning up canvasses. Whole days go by without my speaking to anyone. And every day my concentration becomes more intense, my hand more sure. I have a power of color in me that I never had before, a sense of breadth and strength. The summer has vanished in a fever of work and now the mistral is blowing. Always the wind restless and unceasing, sweeping among the dead leaves in a rage so that I'm forced to remain indoors. Now and then when the storm inside me gets too loud, I take a glass too much to distract me. I must watch out for my nerves, I'm getting haggard I know. If I go on this way, some day or other there may be a crisis, yet I can't stop. Sometimes I work on into the night - I'm hardly conscious of myself anymore - and the pictures come to me as in a dream with a terrible lucidity.

• Vincent Van Gogh : [In letter]  Dear Theo, I'm so happy to have to have Gaugin here; not to be alone anymore. It's of tremendous value to me to see him work. He's a very great artist, and a good friend... We argue of course, mainly about painting. And our arguements are so electric that I come out of them often with my brain tired, like a rundown battery.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Paul!

  [approaches Paul painting] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : It doesn't seem to work. It doesn't work. Paul, could you come over and take a look?

  Paul Gauguin : Vincent, I'm trying to catch this light.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I remember what you said; I softened my colors, I try to control them - then I loose it.

  Paul Gauguin : [slightly irritated]  Go back and try again.

  Vincent Van Gogh : [points at Paul's work]  That's what I mean! Look how pale and thin that sky is. You use the same brush strokes all over. It's got no texture, no energy - it's all *flat*!

  Paul Gauguin : [gets up angrily]  That's the way I see it! *Flat*!

  [Vincent walks away] 

• Vincent Van Gogh : [in letter]  Dear Theo, I've seen Doctor Gachet. He's a pleasant man and he has some good paintings in his house. He wants me to do his portrait. But as for his helping me, I'm afraid we mustn't hope for too much. When the blind lead the blind, don't they both fall in the ditch? Gachet is right about one thing: this place is beautiful. It tempts me to paint, and the work goes well. Besides portraits I've been doing some landscapes. I have a feeling of being sure of my brush than ever before. So, I work in haste from day to day; as a miner does knowing he's facing disaster.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Theo is leaving.

  Roulin : What?

  Vincent Van Gogh : No, it's good news. He's getting married.

  Roulin : That's wonderful! Let's go right back and celebrate.

  [Vincent says nothing] 

  Roulin : Um, do you know the girl?

  [Vincent shakes his head] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : Well, she's a Dutch girl. Theo's going to Holland this weekend to meet her family. Mother will be happy. She's always wanted one of us to get married, and...

  Roulin : When you write your brother, wish him well from me and my family.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes, yes, I will.

• Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, I've just spoken with Dr. Rey. He says you're doing very well, and quite soon you'll be able to travel. Johanna and I want you to...

  Vincent Van Gogh : Theo, I want to have myself committed. I'm going to go to an asylum.

  Theo Van Gogh : What?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I have to, Theo. More of these attacks could leave me helpless, like a crab on its back, unable even to do away with myself.

  Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, come live with us in Paris. You could have a reasonable life. You'll see that none of this ever happens again.

  Vincent Van Gogh : How, Theo? Will you and Johanna take turns watching me? Make sure the symptoms aren't coming back? When your baby's born... I'm a danger to others. I'm a danger to myself. Believe me, I'll be better off in an asylum.

  Theo Van Gogh : Vincent, please, you mustn't think like that.

• Theo Van Gogh : You've become a stranger. You've changed.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I haven't changed, Theo. Outwardly, perhaps, but inside me, I still want the same things.

  Theo Van Gogh : What things?

  Vincent Van Gogh : The things we talked about in the old days. To be of use, to work, to bring something to the world.

• Vincent Van Gogh : It's not right to grieve that long. God didn't intend the living to mourn forever.

• Vincent Van Gogh : You all right?

  Christine : I'm sick. I'm tired. Just leave me alone. Everything's rotten. Now I understand why people drown themselves.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Don't say things like that.

  Christine : Why not?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Suicide's a terrible thing.

  Christine : What do you know about it?

• Vincent Van Gogh : You'll see for yourself. In the morning, you open the window, see, there's the green of the gardens. Wait till you see the yellow fields at noon under the full sun. And the light, you wouldn't believe it; but, all the time, these yellows are really here. Everywhere you look, there's something to paint.

• Vincent Van Gogh : If they're right, then everything I've done is wrong.

• Paul Gauguin : It's direct, it's vigorous. What's your name?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Vincent van Gogh.

  Paul Gauguin : He has a statement to make and he makes it. Theo's brother?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes.

  Paul Gauguin : Glad to know you. It's honest. It owes nothing to anybody. Nothing.

• Paul Gauguin : Let's get this place in order.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Show me the paintings.

  Paul Gauguin : That can wait. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's confusion, mental or physical.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Millet's one of the few artists that ever really captured the human spirit. Here. In the dignity of toil. Millet uses paint to express the word of God.

  Paul Gauguin : Then he should have been a preacher, not a painter.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I painted them for you.

  Paul Gauguin : That's very friendly of you, Vincent. That's very friendly.

• Paul Gauguin : No wonder they call you crazy around here. Come on, Vincent, let's get out of here. Give it up! You can't paint in this gale.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I've done it plenty of times.

  Paul Gauguin : Yes, and I've seen the results.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Hello, redhead. Where have you been?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Hello, Rachel.

  Rachel : I thought you must have gone away.

  Vincent Van Gogh : No, I've been working.

  Rachel : What's the matter? Don't you like me anymore?