But Gaye flourished in Ostend, an unlikely setting for an urbane black American accustomed to Los Angeles, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. At first, the move seemed like another blunder. He did not speak Flemish or French, there were few local residents who knew or cared about his musical achievements, and he was often quite isolated. Still, he found solace in the salty sea air and worked himself back into shape by jogging along the beach and boxing in a local gym. He started work in a nearby studio on a comeback album that would become an international smash, and, more importantly, he cut down on drug use.

This troubled man found a measure of inner peace in Ostend that seemed to vanish when he returned to the United States after almost two years in Belgium. Gaye started abusing drugs again and eventually was shot dead by his father after a series of confrontations in their home.

"Marvin was a special man, very distinguished, very impressive, but it was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," says Monique Licht, an independent-film producer in Belgium who worked with Gaye on a 30-minute film for Belgian television, 1981's Marvin Gaye: Transit Ostend. (A new film about Gaye, starring Law & Order's Jesse L. Martin as the Motown legend, is scheduled to begin production later this year.) "At times, he was like an elegant zombie walking along the beach in Ostend," says Licht. "He was there, but at the same time he was not there. His mind was working all the time, thinking a lot of things, and he was far from his family. Everything was broken in his life and in his mind. He was suffering."

Like so many who knew Gaye, Licht was both enchanted by his warmth and intelligence and alarmed by his deep unhappiness, which he was unable to mask in his later years. She remembers a vibrant man who was at times utterly delightful and at times completely lost.