The Horse's Mouth (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]

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Product Description ------------------- Very touching story based on life of famous British painter who enjoyed living in squalor, always looking for bigger and better canvas. .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 P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Additional Features ------------------- The extras on the Criterion Collection's Horse's Mouth DVD are few but of high quality. A 2001 interview with the eminently civilized director Ronald Neame answers just the right questions, including his initial reluctance about the project (when Claude Rains earlier suggested the novel to him, Neame thought it unfilmable; he said the same thing when Alec Guinness proposed it as a vehicle for himself, to which Guinness replied, "Ronnie, you're quite wrong"--and went off and wrote the screenplay). Also included is D.A. Pennebaker's short "Daylight Express," which played before The Horse's Mouth during the film's original New York run; it's a lovely montage of train commuting set to Duke Ellington music. A vintage trailer shows how much foreign films of the era were sold for their presumed sex appeal. The color digital transfer is luscious. --Robert Horton See more ( javascript:void(0) )