"This short film was made using works painted by Paul Gauguin at the end of the 19th century." "At the time, Gauguin was only known to a privileged few." "Today, he is considered to be one of the greatest French painters of all time." "Cinedis presents" "PAUL GAUGUIN" "Directed by ALAIN RESNAIS based on a scenario and idea by GASTON DIEHL" "Special effects by HENRY FERRAND Sound by CALVET" "Text taken from PAUL GAUGUIN read by JEAN SERVAIS" "Music by Darius Milhaud" "A bank employee and head of family, well-to-do, middle-aged, comfortable, discovers that he has been lying to himself." "He wants, indeed he must paint." "From that point on, he devotes himself exclusively to painting, and after twenty years of poverty dies alone." "This man is Paul Gauguin." "From this point forth I paint every day he wrote in 1883." "But his obsession became more and more demanding" "He had to break away, abandon home, family, familiar habits." "I want to be happy as only a free man can be." "I have known extreme poverty, what it is to be hungry, to be cold." "You become accustomed to it" "And the terrible thing about poverty is that it keeps you from working." "From now on, without family, without friends what I want above all is to flee Paris." "Paris is a wasteland for the poor man." "I live simply by the ocean, near a fishing village." "as do the country folk ." "I go by the name of Savage." "I love Brittany" "I find there the wild, the primitive" "When their clogs echo on the granite earth" "I hear the muffled, dull, powerful sound that I seek in my painting." "I know very well that I will be less and less understood" "Out of all my hard work this year all that I have left is the howling of Paris, come here to discourage me to the point that I no longer dare to paint." "And if my own sacrifice were also useless" "cursed by all who know me" "I would go to a Pacific island and live off of peace and quiet and art." "During the night of June 8, after 63 days of feverish anticipation and impatient dreaming of the desired land" "We rounded Moorea to discover Tahiti" "On one side the ocean, on the other, the mountain." "My hut lies here, between the mountain and the sea." "This is Tahiti, faithfully conceived by a painter in love with this place," "Tahiti with its people, the most beautiful in the world" "Pleasure is the only passtime" "They crown themselves in flowers they laugh, they play, and they love." "They smell of the love they invite and that will come with the night." "Dusk brings back the old fears, religious fears, fear radiating from the unknown forces of nature." "What a crazy, sad adventure, my trip to Tahiti." "These long nights without sleep age a person quickly." "Beaten down by poverty and illness" "Worn out by the thankless battle that I have taken on" "My suffering is such that it is impossible for me to work regularly." "If I can no longer paint me, who has nothing else left, no wife, no children" "Would not death be preferable, a hundred times over?" "So then he began to think of the far-off shores of France imagined a snow-covered Breton village but death stopped his brush and on that morning of May 8, 1903 the painting remained unfinished." "The End"