The Horse's Mouth

There are books and movies that are so indelibly scratched into your brain that it is risky to try to establish the experience of meeting them anew.

I suffered this odd realization again last night when I tried to re-watch The Horse's Mouth, the movie (1958) based on the English writer Joyce Cary's novel (1944), directed by Ronald Neames, with a screenplay by the star of the film, Alec Guinness.

The story, in case you haven't seen or heard of this book or movie (you kids), concerns Gulley Jimson, a London painter who is so obsessed with his work that he'll stop at nothing in order to finish a canvass, including associating with a menage of swine and uncomprehending boobs who he thinks may be able to help him finish his vision.

When I saw this movie years ago, I thought it hilarious. Watching it last night, I was aggrieved to realize it hasn't held up very well.

I've changed. The times have changed. Art itself has changed, though the movie's major theme still rings true; the lone artist battling the odds, his critics, the very notion of a society that could give a damn what he or she is attempting to accomplish.

But none of that is wholly what bothered me about watching the movie again. In truth, and this is just one critic's opinion mind you, it is deadening. It is flat. It isn't nearly as funny as I remembered it.

I don't think Guinness' screenplay is very good. Much of the dialogue doesn't work, many scenes are actually quite boring, and overall it simply appears to have missed too many opportunities to, in reality, approach the reputation it has garnered as a masterpiece by Neames.

Like much else these days, it's overrated.  It was overrated in my mind.

Watching this movie was something of a research project for me (I stumbled across it at the library and felt a connection), for I am editing a comedic novella about a fixated artist right now. When I first learned of the subject involved in this book, I thought of The Horse's Mouth.

I wish I hadn't.


TS