Vincent (1987 film)

Vincent (1987 film)
Directed by	Paul Cox
Written by	Paul Cox
Starring	John Hurt Marika Rivera Gabriella Trsek
Release dates	1987
Running time	105 minutes
Box office	AU$301,205 (Australia)[1]

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 Vincent 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.^[2]

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.

John Hurt reads 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.^[3]

References

1. "Australian Films at the Australian Box Office", Film Victoria accessed 24 October 2012
2. "Interview with Paul Cox", Signet, 13 January 2001 accessed 18 November 2012
3. David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Pan MacMillan, 1990 p114

External links

• Vincent at the Internet Movie Database
• Vincent at New York Times
• Vincent at Oz Movies