Van Gogh

Director: Maurice Pialat

1991 / 158min / DCP

Having aspired in his youth to be a painter before settling for becoming merely one of the mightiest French cineastes of his generation, Pialat was perhaps uniquely qualified to give us a screen Van Gogh who felt genuinely new—as played by musician-turned-actor Jacques Dutronc less manic and combative than crabbed and resigned, not a wild-eyed ear-cutter but a man growing near to the exhaustion of passion. Pialat’s coup was to make a Van Gogh film that doesn’t assume its subject’s preeminence any more than did his age, a “biopic” that doubles as an entire portrait of an era, that of the Belle Epoque, in which the supporting players are every bit as interesting as the vaunted Great Man. “Astonishing, totally astonishing; far beyond the cinematic horizon covered up until now by our wretched gaze.” —Jean-Luc Godard

Distributor: Cohen Film Collection

Part of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters