68
Metascore
14 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- Douglas gives an appropriately fiery star turn as Van Gogh, delivering some of the best work of his career.
- 90Chicago ReaderChicago ReaderIn a compositional sense, the film has a realistic feel, but Minnelli’s graphic mise-en-scene and poetic transitions give the impression of moving paintings, and when the film is at its most dazzling, there’s a sense that the director is reshaping the very nature of existence.
- 80Village VoiceVillage VoiceThe bold and vivid colors of the paintings themselves and the sets and landscapes contribute heavily to the film's dramatic impact. [10 Jul 1957, p.8]
- 75LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenLarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenLust for Life features exhilarating scenes of Van Gogh at work, often set in the locations of some of his most famous paintings and punctuated with close-ups of the original artwork. Like the 2017 animated experiment Loving Vincent, the movie functions not only as a biopic, but as an exercise in aesthetic reinterpretation.
- 75Chicago TribuneJohn PetrakisChicago TribuneJohn PetrakisThe key to this 1956 bio-pic is the sumptuous cinematography and art direction, which is to be expected from the man who gave us "An American in Paris" and "Gigi." [23 Nov 2001, p.C11]
- 70The New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe New York TimesBosley CrowtherBoth the script and the performance of this picture have a striking integrity in putting forth the salient details and the surface aspects of the life of van Gogh.
- 60Time OutTime OutThroughout Lust for Life, Van Gogh, brilliantly portrayed by Kirk Douglas as a man forever on a knife-edge, struggles to explain himself to his family and to Anthony Quinn's Gauguin. However, Minnelli, with the colours he chooses - which follow those of the paintings - and with his dramatic counterpointing of events in Van Gogh's life with his canvases, undermines all explanations.
- 58The A.V. ClubNathan RabinThe A.V. ClubNathan RabinMinnelli and star Kirk Douglas give Vincent Van Gogh's famously tortured existence the melodramatic treatment in 1956's Lust For Life, and the result falls closer to high camp than high art.