Instead, bright and early next morning, we were marched before an officer, a Major, who passed judgement on the matter. Duffy and Weedman, in their turn, were marched in and then taken off somewhere and it became my turn.
    “Attention, left turn, leprigh leprigh leprigh righ turn leprigh leprigh leprigh leprigh halt!”
    “My leave pass is real, sir. It’s a mistake.”
    The major considered the pass in question.
    “It is different to the others, sergeant.”
    “You could call the base and check, sir.”
    He did, while I stood right there. Now, I will never know whether someone was hopelessly incompretent or else playing a cruel joke but whatever the case, the person on the other end of the phone declared me to be AWOL. Which of course, I was by then. I was due back at Canungra two hours ago but no one mentioned that.
    “One month’s penal detention. Take him away sergeant.”

​

The other work is Lust for Life, which takes on the whole adult life of Vincent van Gogh with fine style. Vincent Minnelli (rather more famous for musicals and being Judy Garland’s husband and Lisa’s dad) directed splendidly, and here Kirk Douglas did an excellent and quite believable idiotic, rabid, over-excitable van Gogh—one of that actor’s finest performances. He was matched by the unlikely but successful casting of Anthony Quinn as Gauguin, although the best character in the piece is the solid actor James Donald playing Vincent’s long-suffering brother Theo. Theo, of course, was for along time the only person who saw his brother’s genius, bankrolled him accordingly and eternally dug him out of scrapes. Donald does the pained devotion thing to perfection.
    Tending to stick to the facts, the film is rather episodic and light on story but it makes up for it with the outstanding cinematography. Here the backgrounds are what might have been the actual background for Vincent’s works, done in colours that he might have chosen and the fun of the piece is spotting which painting the present scene belongs to. All in all, an outstanding movie about the torment of the artist’s life, both to himself and others.