User Reviews

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. After establishing Jimson, Guinness's script doesn't do much with him. 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. Neame was Lean's cinematographer in his early days, Guinness was Lean's favorite actor, and Walsh was Lean's ex-wife. Even Anne V. Coates, later the Oscar-winning editor of "Lawrence Of Arabia", snipped this as well.

She deserved her Oscar; not so Guinness his nomination here. As a comedy, "The Horse's Mouth" is a bit of a miss. A scene of Jimson ruining a rich couple's penthouse apartment is painfully unfunny, especially when a sculptor friend of Jimson (Michael Gough) arrives out of nowhere to add to the mess. 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". Like much else in regard to the movie, I'm at a loss to what it means, but I value the experience. That counts for something with art.

Alec Guinness wrote the screenplay. Already an actor of great repute, in doing so he was in a very dominating position. The film gives the impression of a much less collaborative affair - writer/director/star - than is usual, or successful. Very hard for director to question a portrayal when the star can truthfully say that he knows the character far better than does the director.

Guinness chose a deep croaky voice. He consequently lost all musicality - most obviously when he sings but throughout his voice is an inexpressive monotone. The dialogue lacks sparkle further dulled by his monotone. There is a problem in any case of portraying a talented but inarticulate artist - how do you indicate talent or even genius? Apparently based on the writer Dylan Thomas, whose drunkenness was companionable (Richard Burton once a companion?), there was no doubt wit in their conversation. Here the painter is mainly rascally, the paintings shown don't particularly impress either intrinsically or by the way they are treated. All that is left is the implication that for someone so badly behaved yet to still be sought after, must have a great deal of talent. The film fails to show people being won over by his pictures and forgive his trespasses - that's a failure of direction.

Given the great talents involved, it is less than it could have been. But given these talents, it should not in anyway be patronised. Even great artists get it wrong sometimes, it doesn't affect their greatness or my admiration.

"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. But as the story develops it, like all great literature, manages to puncture almost all of life's rationalizing balloons. 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! And pull your socks up!

The DVD version includes a short by Pennebaker that feels as fresh and contemporary, accompanied by a Duke Ellington tune, which played along with "Horse's" original release.

My late wife, an artist, loved this film, and it gave me such insights into the way her mind worked. Guiness is wonderful; for once we see many levels of the character he portrays. Kay Walsh is so touching as the woman in his life, while Mike Morgan makes the perfect art groupie. 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. His almost soliloquy on the human foot; the scene where he shrugs and says that was not what he was trying to say, after he has ruined the toff's wall, these are priceless and our entry into an artist's mind. When the houseboat sets sail down the Thames, to the comment about the sea by the looney who pipes Gully aboard is a bit of perfection set on celluloid. He stands there, framing a vision of another canvas on the hull of a freighter, while reciting this wonderful doggerel that I always get mixed up when I try to say it, and all the while Nosey and Sara spur him on. I've never read the book and wonder if this represents his death, but I take from it what I will.

One other thought: there are certain films shot on location that should be filed away as time/place documentaries. This one is a perfect example: London 1958.

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. His search for the perfect wall on which to paint, and the subject matter he ultimately winds up painting on one of the walls found in his search, is priceless. The Joyce Cary novel, and its companions in the Jimson trilogy (`Herself Surprised' and `To Be a Pilgrim') are well worth reading, but this movie is a very British, very engaging classic. In many ways, it's the movie that `Pollack' (good though it was) should have been.

This is probably my favorite movie. 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. Kay Walsh, who partnered with Sir Alec in Tunes of Glory, is equally brilliant.

Having said that, I recently read Joyce Cary's novel, on which the movie is based, and I have to say that the book is much darker than the movie, which plays up the darkly comic scenes of the novel while diminishing - or even omitting - some of the darker moments. Still, the movie stands well on its own, even if it is a somewhat different entity than the book.

It's very simple. This film has meant a lot to me. An enlightened art teacher from high school played this for us in class. I haven't been the same since. 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. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be creatively inspired.

A year after winning the Oscar for Best Actor in The Bridge on the River Kwai, Alec Guinness was back to doing comedy, but with a lot bigger budgets than he was used to. 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. Yet even as he's fleecing all around him including his girl friend Kay Walsh and devoted acolyte Mike Morgan, he still retains that likability. You do end up rooting for him even as he pulls some outrageous scams.

Kay Walsh who as David Lean's ex-wife was friends with Guinness and his wife Merula. Lean of course was responsible for Guinness's breakout roles in Great Expectations and 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. Guinness had worked with him previously on Morgan's only other film credit, Barnacle Bill. 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.

I love this movie; it's on my all-time (ever-growing) list of the ones I love to see again and again. Not very surprising, I also loved reading Joyce Cary's wonderful book. However fine a film version of a work of literature, there is always more in the text. One of the glories of this film is how much of Cary's book it brings to full life. 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 will seek out the others as soon as possible. To the person whose name i didn't think to write down when reading your comment: Thank you very much.

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. I must say the resulting paintings are not to my taste, so I squirmed uncomfortably at the sight of them.

But the film is really a character study of the eccentric man and his close friendship with some equally weird friends. 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.

Alec Guinness was one of Britain's greatest screen actors, but "The Horse's Mouth" must count as one of his most eccentric projects. It appears to have been something of a labour of love as he not only starred in the leading role, but also wrote the screenplay, giving him the only screenwriting credit of his career. (I presume he was an admirer of the novel by Joyce Cary on which it is based).

Guinness here plays Gulley Jimson, an eccentric London-based artist. When we first see him, he is being released from a one-month sentence in Wormwood Scrubs (a notorious London prison) for harassing Mr Hickson, the President of the Royal Academy, who he believes owes him money. The plot is too complicated to set out in full, but it revolves around three main themes-Jimson's continuing persecution of the unfortunate Hickson, his attempts to recover one of his paintings from his ex-wife Sara and his destruction of the elegant flat of his patrons, Sir William and Lady Beeder, while trying to paint a mural on one of their walls.

I felt that there was a massive plot-hole at the centre of the film, which affected my enjoyment of it. (I have never read the novel so cannot say if the same problem exists there). We are asked to accept that Jimson is not only a talented artist- the paintings we see were actually painted by John Bratby, a noted painter at the time- but also a successful one. His works are collected by the rich and famous, he is given an exhibition at the Tate Gallery which proves an enormous popular success with queues around the block, and we are told that the painting in Sara's possession is worth £5,000, a much larger sum in 1958 than it would be today. Yet we are also asked to accept that he is in great financial difficulties and lives in poverty-stricken squalor in a decrepit old houseboat on the Thames.

Why? If one of Jimson's pictures was worth £5,000, he would only need to sell one a year to live in considerable comfort. (In 1958 many people had to manage on an annual wage of less than £1,000). If he managed to sell ten a year he would have virtually a millionaire's lifestyle. He may be eccentric, hard-drinking, crude and unmannerly, but artistic patrons are generally willing to overlook such defects in a man they consider a genius. The plot of the film might work if Jimson were to be portrayed either as untalented or as talented but unappreciated. It does not work to portray him as both talented and acknowledged as such.

This plot-hole was not my only problem with the film. I disliked the theme music, a loud and strident arrangement of Sergei Prokoviev's "Lieutenant Kijé", which probably had the composer rolling in his grave. (The task of arranging it was given, at the author's request, to his musician son Tristram Cary, a piece of nepotism which didn't pay off).

I also- and this is a rare thing for me to say- disliked Guinness's acting. He plays Jimson with what might be called a reverse falsetto, an unnaturally deep and gravelly bass voice, which made it seem as though he were suffering from an unpleasant throat complaint. He also made the character seem completely unsympathetic, when the intention was probably to make him a loveable rogue. This is not the worst performance by Guinness I have seen- that would be his turn in brownface as Professor Godbole in "A Passage to India"- but with the difference that Godbole is only a minor character in what is otherwise a reasonably good film. Here, Jimson is the main character, so Guinness's overacting adversely affects the film as a whole. This is also the worst film by Ronald Neame which I have seen, a director whose other work I have admired in films like "The Card" (also starring Guinness), "The Chalk Garden" and "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie". 4/10.

Although most Americans have little knowledge of his work other than Star Wars, Alec Guinness produced an amazing body of work--particularly in the 1940s-1950s--ranging from dramas to quirky comedies. I particularly love his comedies, as they are so well-done and seem so natural and real on the screen--far different from the usual fare from Hollywood.

I first saw this movie when I was about 13 or so, and didn't appreciate it very much. Years later, when I became fascinated with Guinness' comedies, I decided to give it another chance. And boy am I glad I did!! The movie concerns the life of an extremely edgy and rather nasty artist. Guinness really plays this up and creates one of the quirkiest and funniest characters I have ever seen. In essence, the man is a rascal that is driven to create his art regardless of what it takes to get it done! What I missed the first time I saw the film were the extremely catchy music and the amazing art created for this movie. I am not the biggest fan of modern art, but the second time i saw the movie I really liked most of the works done for the movie--it just was a darn shame that much of it was destroyed in the course of the 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. Get this version!!!! 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, 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. The film is filled with wonderfully amusing comic moments, and it is only prevented by a few small things from being any better, such as a lack of depth, since there is not much else to the film, other than entertainment value. The premise also wears out before the end and some of the supporting characters, in particular Michael Gough's, are overly silly and add nothing to the tale. However, if not perfect, this is still delightful stuff, with a couple of great performances and many lively moments to be had.

this film supports, if that's the word, some extraordinarily poor acting, principally by Houston and Morgan, but also, embarrassingly, by the great Obi-Wan himself, grumbling unconvincingly into an invisible beard. The whole business is lifted from British rep, provincial reparatory theater, and no direction is evident that might have changed the pacing to that of a film. indeed, the blandly even timing, which is responsible for a lack of humour in well-worked sitcom lines, is redolent more of a radio play than one for the stage - though the british by this time had mastered that genre, whereas they remained curiouslty stilted in film. guinness wrote the script, and maybe he shouldnt have.

for once, a very rare once, television skills that were yet to be developed would have done this farce a world of good.

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. He's a scammer and a reprobate, but he's also a great artist who doesn't believe in art. Yet he is compelled to paint.

With the help of maybe girl friend (Kay Walsh) they try to track down the paintings sold on the cheap to pay off the debts of his former wife (Renee Houston). The art dealer (Ernest Thesiger) is a crook and has cheated everyone by telling them the paintings are worthless. So Gulley tries to find an art patron who will support him. He finds an older couple of patrons but after they go on holiday, he moves into their apartment and trashes it while he paints a mural.

Gulley is always looking for "a big wall" on which to paint his big paintings and finally finds the side of a building about to be demolished. His compulsion is so great, he MUST paint on this wall but has no money, so he "sells" sections of the wall to amateurs who combine to create a fabulous urban mural (to his design). This project seems to assuage his compulsions, but after the wall's destruction he's off to find a new horizon... or is he? This is one of Guinness' great performances. In a comic role with serious undertones, few actors were ever better than Guinness, and he grabs onto this quirky role with great gusto. Indeed, Guinness even wrote the script (based on a novel by Joyce Cary). At age 44, he's totally believable as the grizzled 60-ish artist. The great and underrated Kay Walsh turns in a ferociously funny turn as the friend he owes money to. Walsh's character lives in fury that she has been cheated and short-changed by life. Together, Walsh and Guinness burn up the screen with their acting talent.

Co-stars add just the right touch. Houston and Thesiger are old pros. Michael Gough plays the obsessed sculptor. Veronica Turleigh and Robert Coote are fun as the art patrons. Gillian Vaughan is a hoot as the model. May Hallatt is funny as the scrub woman.

A special word must be said for Mike Morgan who plays Nosey, the adoring and gangling young man who follows Gulley everywhere. Morgan is just terrific here with just the right blend of awkward youth and that special British eccentric comedic touch. In his late 20s, Morgan died suddenly of meningitis before the film was finished, and several of his scenes were dubbed by another actor.

This is a great film.

Ingenious, fun, silly, playful, entertaining, strange. 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. We're introduced to him from jail, and it unfolds in the sense where learning about him is also either liking or hating what life has brought him to be. Just make sure that you're not going to be an artist, or his protégé (who takes an awful lot of bullying). This is another forgotten film in time in that it's perfect casting, and perfect direction. It's an effortless viewing movie that will bring much satisfaction to viewers of any age, who aren't familiar with Alec Guinness' work besides the obvious. His passionate, sometimes surly characterization of a brilliant painter is one that should last for the ages.

The Horse's Mouth (1958) : Brief Review -

Gulley Jimson, a funny artist, who was so serious about art that he destroyed his own work before others could. Alec Guinness, a legendary British actor, wrote the screenplay for this film and also acted in the role. Well, now you know to whom this film belongs. It so happens that most of Alec's films I loved had great screenplays-or rather, better screenplays than storylines. The Horse's Mouth happens to be one of them. It has an ordinary story but a very good screenplay-especially the climax. One has to be an artist or an art lover to understand that subversive silent burn at the end. Gulley Jimson is quite an eccentric painter with scattered vision and a clueless career. However, the passion for painting is pretty strong and admirable. The film follows his journey after getting out of jail and how he goes on painting the wall, or walls. Although the film doesn't make much sense in the first half, the second half gets things going well. I'd mention the climax again because the headline of the review is based on it. It's really fantastic to see an artist value his work. So much that he wouldn't let others destroy it because it's too much of a big responsibility. "I had to do it," he says, adding that it's tough for others to "destroy the national monument". That last send-off without a proper conversion was really moving. The man who speaks about exploring everything in life through his art also has the dialogue, going this way: "Go and do something sensible, like shooting yourself! But don't be an artist!" Such poignant stokes he has given to the film with his screenwriting. Guinness is fabulous as an actor in the film, but I'd admire his writing skills more here. Maybe because I have seen a lot of acting and less of his writing. This one is purely his show, all the way. I took it on my watchlist as a comedy, got a bit bored because there was hardly any comedy, and the meaningful drama won me surprisingly. Do watch it.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

In my opinion, Alec Guinness' performance in this movie was his highest film acting achievement in a brilliant career. His ability to move this film along at a good pace is a joy to behold. I watch it whenever I get a chance and enjoy it no matter how often that is. Unfortunately, it isn't often enough.

Not only does Alec Guiness play the leading role in his own adaptation of Joyce Cary's novel but has also formed a production company in order to make it. This represents a true labour of love and it is such a pity that he and his director Ronald Neame have chosen to avoid the pathos of the original and in keeping with their Ealing Comedy treatment have completely changed the ending.

Artist Gulley Jimson is referred to by various characters as 'a genius' but that could not be further from the truth, especially as the ghastly Expressionist daubs attributed to him have been painted by Royal Academician(ha-ha) John Bratby whilst his sociopathic, wilfully destructive and criminal behaviour simply alienates one's sympathy.

Sir Alec's portrayal is a tour de force however and was recognised as such at the Venice Film Festival. The performances of Kay Walsh and Renee Houston are nothing less than little gems but it is probably best to draw a discreet veil over Michael Gough's bizarre turn as a loony sculptor.

Gorgeous Technicolor cinematography is courtesy of Arthur Ibbetson and inspired use has been made of the music that Serge Prokofiev wrote in the 1930's for the Russian film 'Lieutenant Kijé'.

Although Mr. Neame's direction is rather uninspired, the quintessentially English eccentricity of this piece is not without its appeal but for a less weighty view of a mediocre artist suffering from delusions of adequacy, it is best to watch 'The Rebel' fom 1961.

Alec Guinness plays obsessed artist Gulley Jimson in "The Horse's Mouth," a 1958 film written by Guinness. Gulley is a grizzly-voiced, unkempt, grouchy artist who will paint his vision at all costs. We first see him being released from jail, and then, annoyed by a young man, Nosey (Mike Morgan), who wants to learn at his feet, he attempts to get back into prison.

Since the prison doesn't want him, Gulley then returns to what got him into prison in the first place - harassing phone calls to a wealthy man, Hickson (Ernest Thesiger), who was given 18 canvasses by Gulley's ex-wife (Renee Houston) in payment of Gulley's debts to him. Gulley wants the canvasses back because he has a letter from another wealthy man who wants to buy one. 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. Yes, he decides, that is what I must have for my painting of the raising of Lazurus. The couple leave for Jamaica, and Gulley stays on, commandeering a key from the superintendent. He then starts selling their things in order to buy supplies. The laugh out loud scenes come here, when Michael Gough, a sculptor, arrives and moves in his block of material. 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. His ideas are unlimited, and throughout the film, he is, in a sense, framing his next canvas.

"The Horse's Mouth" could be made today, it's just as fresh as it was in 1958. Guinness is sheer perfection as Gulley - nasty, contemptuous of commercialism, completely zeroed in on his vision and his art while he trashes the world around him. And for all that, a serious artist with something to say. 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. Ronald Neame's directing is first-rate.

This film is a total triumph.

Even understanding the British class structure the way I do, and the British sense of humor as I do, and the time this film was made, it's a flop. Not bad enough to just switch it off, but not good enough to actually be interesting. There is something about the British lower classes feeling that the rich owe them which always rubs me the wrong way. The entitlement of people to feel they have the right to take something just because they want it, regardless of who owns it, is just irksome, and this movie revels in it. Stir all the class resentment you want, and then add a few slapstick scenes, and you get this mess of disjointed scenes without a real plot. My advice: once you've seen the parts at the beginning where Alec Guinness is making silly voices over the phone (aside from the Popeye voice he uses for most of the movie), you're done. Just stop there (about ten minutes in). Nothing worthwhile follows.

Confession time, I first saw 'The Horse's Mouth' around ten or twelve years ago, one afternoon on British television and hated it. Alec's "Gulley Jimson" seemed to me to be very un-likable and I found myself unable to get the point of the film. 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.