Classic Movie Review Lust for Life

Lust for Life (1956) 

Directed by Vincente Minnelli 

Written by Norman Corwin 

Starring Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn

Release Date September 17th, 1956 

Published September 5th, 2017 

Our classic this week on the Everyone is a Critic movie review podcast is Kirk Douglas and director Vincent Minnelli’s portrayal of the life of troubled artist Vincent Van Gogh, Lust for Life. If the film illustrates one thing more than anything else it is that acting has changed a great deal since 1956. While Douglas and co-star Anthony Quinn, as fellow painting legend Paul Gaugin rage at each other, it’s not hard to see why the directors of the next generation began to strive for something more natural and genuine from their actors. Lust for Life seems to me to be among the last films for which theatrically trained actors were the vanguard of the cinema.

Lust for Life picks up the life of Vincent Van Gogh as he is first rejected for a position as a priest. After pleading with a church leader that he must be allowed to minister and preach the word of God he is finally given an assignment. Van Gogh travels to a small mining town where he fails to connect with the mineworkers and their families with his scripted sermons. It isn’t until a parishioner takes Van Gogh into the mines that he begins to see that he must not hold himself above his flock.

The church is horrified by Van Gogh’s choice to live without the garish accoutrements his church salary should have allowed him. Their theory is that living a life of privilege away from the common people is to live as an example of what the poor should strive for. What they don’t understand and what Van Gogh completely understands is hopelessness, the way it seeps into the bones of people who’ve never known anything but toil and suffering.

While it is unspoken in the film, my interpretation was that Van Gogh was so moved by what he saw in the mines that he lost his faith in God and began searching for the meaning of life in his paint, a search that consumed him so deeply that his life ended at the age of 38 with suicide. Lust for Life hints that Van Gogh's suicide is part madness and part his belief that he was unable to capture the meaning and beauty of life on his canvas, even though today he is recognized as genius for capturing and enhancing the beauty of humanity and nature in his work.

When Van Gogh is dismissed from the church he begins dedicating himself to painting, specifically attempting to create art that respects a good hard day’s work. He wants to capture life on canvas but his restless mind robs him of the faculties necessary for managing the rest of his life. What little money Van Gogh received from his more successful and stable brother Theo, Van Gogh spends on more paint and canvases, even after he briefly marries a woman who has a small child.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Bob Le Flambeur

Bob Le Flambeur (1956) 

Directed by Jean Pierre Melville 

Written by Jean Pierre Melville, August Le Breton 

Starring Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Guy Decombie 

Release Date August 24th, 1956 

The classic on this week’s Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast is, arguably, the very first film of the French New Wave, Bob Le Flambeur, translated as Bob the Gambler. Bob Le Flambeur is a classic American style heist film seen through the lens of a French admirer of American movies, Jean Pierre Melville. It is Melville’s French sensibility, the way he focuses not on the heist but on the atmosphere of a heist that separates Bob Le Flambeur from American heist movies which had and have turned safe-cracking and men smoking in back rooms leaning over complex drawings into classic film tropes.

Bob Le Flambeur stars Roger Duchesne as the calm, cool and collected, Bob Mantagne. Bob is a well-known and respected former gangster turned well-known and slightly less respected gambler. I shouldn’t put gambler second on Bob’s résumé, as betting seems to Bob as breathing is to the rest of us. As he recounts in the story, Bob was born with an Ace in his palm. Gambling is Bob’s only skill after he lost several years of his life behind bars after blowing a bank heist that killed a friend.

That friend’s son, Paolo (Daniel Cauchy), is now like an apprentice to Bob; a young hustler soaking up Bob’s aura while Bob works to keep the kid from making the mistakes that got his father killed. One of those mistakes would be teaming up with Marc, a pimp with an eye toward building a gangster portfolio by pulling one high-end job. Paolo is narrowly rescued from being at Marc’s side when he’s arrested for beating one of his working girls. Here the film shifts focus from Bob to impart important plot information that I will leave unmentioned here.

The scene is also a further introduction to Inspector Ledru (Guy Decomble) who happens to consider Bob a good friend despite his gangster past. Ledru is the key figure in the dramatic structure of Bob Le Flambeur and the most notably filmic character, a rarity in what is otherwise a less than straight-forward adaptation of the American style gangster movie. Ledru is a requirement of the plot and his arc is significant to the emotional underpinnings of what is otherwise an exercise in cool, French homage.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Giant

Giant (1956) 

Directed by George Stevens 

Written by Fred Guiol, Ivan Moffat

Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker 

Release Date November 24th. 1956 

Published January 8th, 2023 

The latest presentation of The Film Foundation is the 1956 epic, Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. It's the story of money and privilege on the growing Texas prairie of 1956, a time when cattle and oil battled for land and financial supremacy. And a rare moment where a woman confronted the sexism of the time to demand her place in the world. It's also a 3 hour plus movie that takes a while to get to a place where something genuinely interesting takes place. 

The story kicks in when Jordan 'Bick' Benedict, travels to Maryland to purchase an expensive horse. The rich man selling the horse happens to have a beautiful daughter, Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), who challenges him and within days of his arrival, becomes his wife. The two return to Texas where Bick's sister, Luz (Carroll Baker) is less than welcoming of her new sister in-law. Their conflict plays out quickly with Luz's death bringing an end to the brief chapter. 

Luz's death precipitates a rivalry between Bick and Luz's favorite ranch hand, Jett Rink (James Dean), who refuses to take Bick's money. Instead, he takes a piece of Bick's land that is believed to be relatively worthless. This being Texas however, the property is soon found to be valuable, bursting with oil. This furthers the rivalry between Jet and Bick, though that really takes a while to develop. Just as soon as Jet is pumping oil, the film jumps more than a decade into the future. 

I am embarrassed to say this, but it is true, I was bored throughout Giant. I recognize the large story being told and the skillful way in which George Stevens captures it all, but the story failed to grab me. I just couldn't stay interested in the sexless, chemistry free relationship of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. They have three kids, but they have the romantic chemistry of acquaintances who happen to be married. The separate beds they sleep in are a sign of the times in 1956 but they are also, unintentionally symbolic of Hudson and Taylor's lack of bedroom compatibility. 

Then, there is James Dean, a legend who died young and left a blazing legacy. The James Dean of Giant is a creepy weirdo, a wiry, weird little troll of a man. He's supposedly the villain of the picture but he's so rarely on screen in the first two hours of Giant that he hardly registers beyond his deeply mannered and strange performance. The intention appears to be to make Jett Rink the big bad guy of the movie, but he doesn't really do much aside from some of the hammiest drunk acting I've ever seen in a movie. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media.