The Horse's Mouth

Plot synopsis:
Jimson's father, based on a real person known to Cary, was an Academy artist who is heart-broken when Impressionism drives his style from popular taste. Jimson has put aside any consideration of acceptance by either academy or public and paints in fits of creative ecstasy. Although his work is known to collectors and has become valuable, Jimson himself is forced to live from one scam or petty theft to the next. Cadging enough money to buy paints and supplies, he spends much of the novel seeking surfaces, such as walls, to serve as ground for his paintings.
When the novel opens, Jimson has just been released from jail. He seeks money from Hickson, his sometime patron. Later in the book, he tracks down Sara Monday, his ex-wife, and tries to obtain an early painting from her that is worth a great deal. Sara is reluctant to give up the picture, which serves as a reminder of her youth. In the struggle that follows, Sara falls and suffers a fatal injury. Jimson is unsentimental about his life and work and sees himself as someone who has given over to a destructive passion. Yet he regrets nothing.
At the novel's end, Jimson reflects on his life and the home and family that he has missed. But he recognizes that he himself made the decision to sacrifice those possibilities in order to pursue his art. It is only clear at the end that Jimson has suffered a paralysing stroke, and can no longer paint. As he is being taken to hospital, a nun who is nursing him remarks that he should be praying instead of laughing, "Same thing, Mother," replies Jimson, his last words.

Tags: comedy

Review:
My late wife, an artist, loved this film, and it gave me such insights into the way her mind worked.
It's funny to see Dr. Pastorious in old age; he has barely changed since Bride of Frankenstein.The humor is gentle and quiet except for the studio renovation scene, but it is when Gully stands in front of a canvas that the truth of this film comes out.
One of the best movies about art ever made, `The Horse's Mouth' examines the relationships between vision and creation, between art and commerce, and  most importantly  between art and criticism; and makes us laugh at the same time.
Alec Guinness is inspired (when was he ever not inspired, come to think of it) as Gully Jimson, a painter of unlimited ideas who has met with only limited success in the art marketplace  partly because he is so contemptuous of that marketplace.
"Horse's Mouth" certainly stands up well in it's advanced age; at 45 years old it has remained as timeless as any of the great comedic films.One IMDb writer has tagged Gully as a "vulgar" painter, which goes to show that the sensitivities this film violated are still around.
Pinching your loving ex's bum and tickling the rich lady's knee (shades of Groucho), though, are pretty tame today.Gully Jimson is a rich character, Chaplin-like, who single-mindedly pursues painting while disillusioning aspiring young Nosey about the artist's life.
All growled on tiptoes by one of film's classic great actors.Jimson is a man who's given up all else, including health, wealth, conventional relationships, to live in a leaky houseboat with a vision.
Jimson is valorized as is Don Quixote, without suggesting that his hero's journey is a painless one.All is set in a colorful environment with a delightful if conventionally unpolished cast, all the improbably gleeful turns that make the Marx movies so delightful, and a director who contrives seamlessly with Guiness to create a clever and hilarious marvel that can be enjoyed over and over.Heck yeah, there's even a chase scene!
It may be overstatement to call a mere British comedy a timeless classic, but this outstanding movie, beneath its raucously madcap surface, has some very serious things to say about what it means to be an artist, to be driven by visions while living in a society that doesn't care.
I think Guinness is the greatest actor of the century, and that his performance here as the maddening, irascible, impossible Gulley Jimson is the zenith of his movie roles.
I didn't know, until seeing it in someone else's comment here, that "The Horse's Mouth" is only one book of a trilogy about Gulley Jimson.
I can't say I know much of Alec Guinness's work, but I count him as a personal favorite based on this performance alone.
All of these things represent not only the movie, but of Alec Guinness' portrayal of Gully Jimson, a grainy, foul mouthed old artist, trying to make it in life through his paintings.
What I missed the first time I saw the film were the extremely catchy music and the amazing art created for this movie.
In addition to music and art, the performances throughout of all the actors was nearly perfect.Finally, the version of the movie I saw last was from the Criterion Collection.
It had so much wonderful background information about the actual art, the making of the movie, and interesting background information--such as how they got the musical score WITHOUT having to pay royalties and the incredibly sad tale of a magnificent performance by a young supporting actor that did not live to see the finished product..
Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh & Mike Morgan Are Great.
Highly original and entertaining, this film explores the bizarre world of artist Gulley Jimson (Alec Guinness) whom we meet as he is released from jail.
Alec Guinness not only stars in what amounts to a one-man show as aging, struggling London painter Gulley Jimson, he also wrote the script.
Funny he got an Oscar nomination for the writing, and not for the acting.As Jimson, Guinness is a memorably growly, seedy type, testament to the artistic impulse of man running afoul of polite society.
Even his nasty Fagin from "Oliver Twist" was affable company; Jimson tells off his young admirer Nosey (Mike Morgan) with a convincingly hoarse "Go do something sensible, like shooting yourself." It's all for laughs, of course, except when "The Horse's Mouth" gets mildly serious, mostly when Jimson holds forth on his vision of art."Half a minute of revelation's worth a million years of know-nothing," he tells his companion Coker (Kay Walsh)."Who lives a million years?" is her sharp reply."A million people every 12 months.""A Horse's Mouth" isn't always so smart.
Walsh plays her part too shrill, Morgan his too moony, and the artist who provided Jimson's paintings, John Bratby, uses too much red.
He paints some walls, gets into some trouble, and sails away, leaving others to bear witness to his "genius".What I like most about this film, other than Guinness's fine acting and occasional scenes here and there that feature his character to good effect, is the vivid picture you get of London circa the late 1950s, double-decker buses with hoardings for Gordon's Gin and Ty-Phoo Tea on their sides.
Also, director Ronald Neame finds interesting angles to frame the film from in order to give the on-screen action (rarely painting itself, but frequently static conversation shots) a bit of vitality, and often outside with lively streetscape backdrops.This is like a David Lean movie once removed.
Most of the other business in the movie, like a struggle between Jimson and his ex-wife for a portrait of her he needs for painting money, feels like chopped-down scenes from Cary's novel mined for easy laughs, at some expense to story.I didn't care much about Jimson by story's end, but I did enjoy his company, or rather that of Guinness playing Jimson, staring at a charwoman and fixated by her feet, "...old women's feet...thin, flat, long...clinging to the ground like reptiles".
However, re-watching this on DVD, I found it to be far, far better than I remembered and something of a revelation.I found myself identifying with "Gulley" this time around and appreciating Alec's subtle performance (to the extent that I was genuinely sad to see the film end).
Guinness is backed by two astonishingly fine performances by Walsh and Houston (it's Rene's finest performance, for someone with a tendency to play 'broad' here she is remarkably subtle).All in all, a wonderful if sadly under-rated film and one equal to Alec's best Ealing work..
His classic parts in Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Lavendar Hill Mob were done without color for instance, which was a much bigger premium for films in the United Kingdom.Guinness has not played such a disreputable character as Cully Jimson since playing Fagin in Oliver Twist.
Guinness got her cast in the role of his long suffering girlfriend and owner of a pub.Sadly young Mike Morgan died right before shooting ended on The Horse's Mouth.
He gives a nice winsome performance as the young man who just wants to bask in the glow of Guinness's talent and glosses over all the chicanery.I don't think The Horse's Mouth is as good as Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Lavendar Hill Mob. Still Guinness obviously saw the film as a labor of love and the results do show..
Alec Guinness, as Gully Jimson, is a delightful character that we can root for even when he is totally wrong.
The impact of this movie was so great on me that when I see a large blank space on a wall I think of Gully Jimson and wish to see a picture painted on it..
In my opinion, Alec Guinness' performance in this movie was his highest film acting achievement in a brilliant career.
Alec Guinness, working with a highly interesting character, provides an enjoyable leading performance in this film that he scripted himself, and Kay Walsh is also wonderful to watch on screen.
Alec Guinness plays obsessed artist Gulley Jimson in "The Horse's Mouth," a 1958 film written by Guinness.
But upon going to Hickson's house, Hickson's servant calls the police, and Gulley and his some time friend Dee (Kay Walsh) to whom he owes money have to escape via the kitchen and hijack a cab.Gulley goes to the elegant apartment of the couple (Robert Coote and Veronica Turleigh) who want to buy his painting - a small one, it turns out, for their summer home -- and what does he see but an enormous blank wall.
Absolutely hilarious.There is a serious undertone to all of this - Gulley Jimson is a man who has given up everything and lives on a houseboat in order to paint.
The paintings by John Bratby are quirky and look as if someone like Gulley could have done them.It's so sad that the young man who played Nosey died of meningitis during the filming - he was delightful, as is the rest of the cast.
A nice chance to see ALEC GUINNESS as a mad abstract artist with KAY WALSH as his bitterly complaining friend in THE HORSE'S MOUTH.
Guinness also wrote the script which has him as a mad artist--crusty, eccentric, but sometimes lovable--who has a knack for getting into trouble whenever he decides to splash his paints on any bare wall.
Ronald Neame uses the Technicolor camera to capture some nice scenes of London, but the story is essentially a two-character study that works because of the excellent performances of Guinness and Walsh.Summing up: Uneven results but generally amusing and entertaining with some very funny moments..
All of this is proof, of course, that Jimson (Guiness) is a great artist, of which, we're assured by a gushing finale, he surely qualifies.Now, I'm certainly no art critic, but I think I've seen more interesting renderings of the human body in my doctor's office.
This delightful film based on Joyce Cary's novel "The Horse's Mouth" with Neame as director and Bryan as the producer is blessed by an excellent script by the film's leading actor, Alec Guinness.
To the cinema-going public who had come to know Guinness primarily as a leading member of Lean's stock company of British stage actors, and perhaps best as the taciturn quintessentially little English man he had played so often in the Ealing Studio comedies, it must have come as quite a surprise to see him cast against type as the incorrigible sponger, con-man and self-acknowledged artistic genius Gulley Jimpson.
They are either very terrible or very wonderful in the eyes of the beholder, but whatever the viewer's choice, for once in film these paintings are completely believable as the real work of a bohemian painter trying to break all the rules of the academy and perhaps succeeding.
This movie showcases the talents of a great actor and should be studied by acting students keen to learn how to adapt a character.Alec Guiness becomes this rather disreputable artist and gives him many saving qualities.
Supported by a good cast and free to create one of his better though less known performances Guiness holds you spellbound Joyce Cary wrote the screenplay and the artist Gulley Jimson really comes to life using the talents of Alec Guiness ,Joyce Carey and the expert direction of Robert Neame who possibly had an easy time with this movie simply letting Carey and Guiness do what they do best.
The script by Sir Alec Guinness made this a most enjoyable funny well acted film.Kay Walsh is superb as Coker.
Ronald Neame said that he could not see a "film" coming out from the book,but once the script had been written by Sir Alec,he was enthusiastic.The scene with Miss.Walsh running away from the police is hilariously funny.I cannot recommend it too highly.
One of Alec Guinness's movies from the days before he became widely known as Obi Wan-Kenobi, "The Horse's Mouth" has to be one of his best.
Guinness plays Gulley Jimson, a sarcastic artist who goes to absurd lengths to carry out his masterpiece.The movie is about multiple topics, and knows just how to balance them.
But also, the film looks at how Gulley's work affects the people around him.The end of the movie has one of the best examples of using images to tell the story, as opposed to dialogue.
Ronald Neame later directed "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (really good) and "The Poseidon Adventure" (BA-A-A-A-AD!!!!!!!).Also starring Kay Walsh, Renee Houston, Mike Morgan, Robert Coote, Arthur Macrae, Veronica Turleigh, Michael Gough (Alfred in the 1989-97 Batman movies), Reginald Beckwith, Ernest Thesiger and Gillian Vaughan.May the force be with Alec Guinness forever!.
I first saw this movie as part of a late-night Alec Guiness film festival when I was a teen.
Guiness himself is so good that I can't read the book without picturing him as Gulley Jimson, and horror film fans will enjoy seeing Michael (HORROR OF Dracula, etc.) Gough as a rival artist and Ernest (BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN)Thesiger as Jimson's one-time patron driven past his limit by the eccentric artist.Enjoy the movie (but check out the source)..
The movie makes Gully Jimson, as nasty as he is, into a far more attractive person than in the Joyce Carey novel.Visual artists in movies have the advantage that their works can be seen by the audience.
As you can imagine, since the idea of an artist struggling to find the perfect vision is why I consider Synecdoche to be one of the greatest films of all-time, those expectations rolled onto Mouth.
Instead of being about trying to find a vision, the art itself is secondary and it's a pure character study paying close attention to the life of an artist.Despite a cartoonish gruff voice, Alec Guinness is the highlight.
I've read the book(for that matter I've also read "Herself Surprised" by Cary, which tells ex-wife Sara's story) and I must say that it is a good adaptation although Guiness softens the characters a bit, leaving out among other things, Jimson's physical abuse of Sara.
The Horse's Mouth ~ Alec Guiness, Artist At Work.
He's also looking to make the ultimate artistic statement on someone's wall somewhere in London.Alec is hilarious in this movie and the entire picture itself seems to be ahead of it's time.
It is absolutely wonderful.Based on a book by Joyce Cary, it stars the brilliant Alec Guinness ( will the person who said he was not one of the world's greatest actors please tell us who they think is better?
He uses everyone around him, such as barmaid 'Cokey' ( Kay Walsh ) and stammering youthful admirer 'Nosey' ( Mike Morgan ), but they put up with him because they admire his genius.I thought artists such as Gulley were far fetched, until I read an 'Observer' article about the late Francis Bacon.
"Its not the vision I had!", he mutters, echoing those of us who at one point or other in our lives have seen a good idea fail badly.Wonderful supporting cast, particularly Kay Walsh and Renee Houston as Gulley's first wife 'Sal'.
Guinness was in good company here.Gulley's paintings were by John Bratby, an artist with a distinctive visual style.
His eye catching pictures are just what you would expect from someone like Gulley.No music was composed specially for the film, but instead classical pieces by Prokofiev were employed, fitting it to a tee.This is a charming, quirky movie, one of a kind.
Alec Guennis is hysterically funny as Gully Jimson, the British Picasso, an over-the-top artist whose blurry vision of life is expressed only through his paint brush, but his various dealings with the assorted eccentrics he encounters, whether wealthy clients, protégées, landlords or love interests.
Guennis reveals this man's quiet but raspy voice being stronger through his artwork, looking at every empty wall as if he were Chaplin in "Modern Times" busy with his wrench turning every knob or button which came into his sight.While people who appreciate modern art might enjoy this more than standard audiences, it is always a pleasure to see Alec Guennis letting loose and going where no other actor would dare to go in such a bizarre role.
Alec Guiness is Gulley Jimson, a rabid artist just released from jail.
A hysterically funny film, with one of Alec Guinness's greatest performances.
Gulley Jimson (Alec Guinness) is an eccentric, vulgar, misanthropic amateur painter who is struggling to make ends meat.
Aided by a cast of silly characters - his coarse but loving mistress Dee Coker (Kay Walsh), an obnoxious sculptor (Michael Gough), an air-headed model (Gillian Vaughan) and Nosey (Mike Morgan), a naive admirer of his - Gulley struggles to fulfill his artistic desires in spite of everything."The Horse's Mouth" presents Alec Guinness at the pinnacle of his career.
Guinness produced, co-wrote, and starred in this film, one of his finest achievements.Attempting to write a plot summary was hard work.
Like many if not most great comedies, the plot is secondary to the characters, particularly Gulley.
Whether Gulley is a great artist is not the point (and he's pretty obviously not) - it's something he has to do, and he'll do much anything to express himself.Alec Guinness shows his full talent as an actor and comedian here.
Not only is Guinness a great actor, but also a fabulous comedian - able to use his abilities to create unforgettably amusing characters.Gulley Jimson is a fascinating character.
The supporting cast is good, particularly Kay Walsh at her Cockney best and Michael Gough's obnoxious sculptor - but it's Alec's show the whole way."The Horse's Mouth" is a film that must be seen to be enjoyed.
Alec Guinness is Gulley Jimson, curmudgeon and would-be lothario who curses his vocation with the same passion he pours into his paintings.
Renee Houston steals the movie right out from under Guinness' nose in the role of Sara Monday, Gulley's ex-wife who still is sweet on him.
Screenplay adapted by Guinness from a book by Joyce Cary, directed by Ronald Neame."Why doesn't it fit...like it does in the mind?"