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List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780780025752
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 078002575X
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Release Date: June 04, 2002
Running Time: 95 minutes
Sales Rank: 12977
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: November 11, 1958
Editorial Review:
Description:
In Ronald Neame's film of Joyce Cary's classic novel, Alec Guinness transforms himself into one of cinema's most indelible comic figures: the lovably scruffy painter Gulley Jimson. As the ill-behaved Jimson searches for a perfect canvas, he determines to let nothing come between himself and the realization of his exalted vision. A perceptive examination of the struggle of artistic creation, The Horse's Mouth is also director Neame's comic masterpiece.
Amazon.com:
Alec Guinness was in the full bloom of his stardom when he suggested, scripted, and starred in this wonderfully odd 1958 adaptation of Joyce Cary's novel. As Gulley Jimson, a gravel-voiced, antisocial painter, whose artistic drive is as single-minded (and as self-absorbed) as a terrier's, Guinness sketches one of his carefully constructed marvels. The film has a bumpily episodic structure, but when it works, it really works: Gulley inhabiting (and mostly destroying) a penthouse apartment when the upper-crusty owners go on holiday for six weeks, or marshaling an army of apprentices to create a masterpiece on a giant wall in a condemned building. Departing from the novel, Guinness concocted the movie's madcap ending, which is guaranteed to bring a smile. Adding verve is the music, adapted from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé, which fits Gulley like the paint under his dirty nails. The artworks, vivid and thick, are by John Bratby. --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - One of our all-time favorites
This film has the vision of the great novel on it's based on and is one of Alec Guiness's very best. The music, the scenes, the art, the faces of the characters as they come to their moments of personal trial--all amazingly memorable. Wiley, deep-souled Guiness and a great if little known cast. Mad, comic, glorious, sweet, and bitter-sweet. If you have and romantic leanings when it comes to artists, I think you'll love this book. If you're a fan of visionary William Blake you'll REALLY love ... Read More
Rating: - masterpiece by the old master
I bitterly regret that I completely missed seeing or even hearing about this movie until fifty years after it came out. All the movie critics and pundits I have listened to for all those years should hang their heads in shame. This movie belongs in every top twenty list and many top tens. I only found it by accident while browsing through my Netflix recommendations, but I am so glad I picked it.
I hope that Charlie Chaplin had a chance to see this movie while he was still alive because it ... Read More
Rating:  - Technical problem
I love this film and saw it when it first appeared in the 1950's. The DVD version (Criterion) is missing an important segment where the camera repeatedly visits the sculpture as it is chiseled away, finally down to a small scrap of marble.
The segment is important, not only for the immensity of its comedy. But also as a unique comment on the madness of the artists.
Rating:  - Alex Guinness, the master
Poignant comedy about the struggle of an artist made classic through the genius of Alex Guinness.
Rating: - Guiness brews another stout character
Gully Jimson's over-the-top artistic obsession becomes endearing and disturbing in this performance by Alec Guiness, himself a masterful portrayer of larger-than-life characters. He paints Joyce Cary's artist with similarly grotesque colors of personality and behavior as in the vivid palette and bizarre imagery of Jimson's wall-size murals, so adeptly painted by the film's artists themselves. Jimson's art both destroys conventional decency and is destroyed by civil convention. Guiness himself wins ... Read More
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