Vincent van Gogh spent just over a year in Arles, in the south of France, and produced some of his best known paintings there before his breakdown and departure for the asylum at Saint-Remy. Produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and narrated by Edward Herrmann, this 1984 film traces that stretch of his life through his letters to his brother Theo, his paintings of the wheat fields and the Yellow House, and the disastrous visit from Paul Gauguin that ended with Van Gogh cutting off part of his ear. The camera lingers on the canvases themselves, sunflowers, night cafes, the bedroom at Arles, matching brushwork and color choices to what Van Gogh wrote about his intentions at the time. Curators and art historians place the work in the context of the light and landscape of Provence, and the film treats the paintings less as a prelude to tragedy than as evidence of a painter working at full capacity under real strain. It is a plain, well-sourced account of a single productive year rather than a full biography.