Cox was attracted to the project because of his personal admiration for Vincent van Gogh: I found him such a compassionate, wonderful human being.

I found him always honest, always real, always doing his utmost, and I related very much to his type of loneliness.

[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 City.