Toulouse-Lautrec

Born the heir to a rich and aristocratic family, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec seemed to have everything a young man could want - until an accident and bone disease left him with the head and torso of an old man and the legs of a dwarf. With true heroism he turned to drawing and painting the glittering life he could no longer share. He had been forced on to the sidelines, made to understand how society treats its outcasts; and this understanding can be seen in his portraits of the prostitutes he visited, the only women who were available to him. His life was a drama which he consciously lived to the full, dying at the age of thirty-seven from alcohol and venereal disease; but he rejected pity so rigorously that not even those who knew him best realized the weight of suffering he bore. This deeply moving film shows the artist as a man as well as a creative genius.