Evanston: THE HORSE’S MOUTH
Evanston: THE HORSE’S MOUTH
My favorite fictitious artist is Gully Jimson, narrator of Joyce Cary’s 1944 novel, THE HORSE’S MOUTH, and main character in the 1958 film adaptation starring Alec Guinness, who also wrote the screenplay.
I’ve read the book at least three times over the decades and seen the movie that often, most recently a few days ago as an escape from way, way, way too many college bowl games; games only a sponsor or an alum could love. Regular readers know that I enjoy and follow many sports; but this is truly wretched excess.
Gully Jimson is a painter, the son of a painter who was successful until his Academy style was replaced by Impressionism. In the book, which is tougher minded than the film from beginning to end, Gully remembers as a boy seeing his father crying in the garden when his paintings no longer sold.
In both book and film Gully Jimson is an old man, perhaps almost as old as Webb Chiles, whose paintings are known and appreciated by a few, but who is penniless. In part this is his own fault because he continues to pester a wealthy patron, needing ever greater amounts of money not for himself, but to paint ever more epic works, covering entire walls.
A central episode in THE HORSE’S MOUTH is very reminiscent of James Whistler’s “Peacock Room.”
A collector expresses a desire for one of Jimson’s early works, which results in his trying to get a painting from Sara Monday, his ex-wife, of her nude in the bath. While still affectionate toward Gully, Sara relishes the image of the woman she once was and does not want to part with it. The outcome of this is very different in book and movie. As is the painting itself. In the movie, it is brutally expressionistic. In the book, more Renoir-like.
And that is the book’s greatest irony, which is not clear in the movie. Gully Jimson gains fame and has an exhibition at the National Gallery: but what public and critics admire are those early paintings, not the epics of his old age.
In the movie Gully Jimson lives on a kind of house boat on the Thames in London, something apparently possible back then. Penelope Fitzgerald’s fine novel, OFFSHORE, is also about London houseboat dwellers and has an ending so similar to THE HORSE’S MOUTH film that I thought Alex Guinness might have borrowed from her. I checked and found that the novel wasn’t published until 1979. So perhaps Penelope Fitzgerald saw the film and borrowed from Sir Alex.
The book’s ending is harder and more realistic.
The film’s final, implausible, impractical, unseaworthy image is a delight.
THE HORSE’S MOUTH film is available on DVD from Netflix, but not streaming. I recorded it from Turner Classic Movies, which runs it from time to time.
THE HORSE’S MOUTH book is available in paperback from various Amazon sellers at prices ranging from $0.12 used to $1,133.97 (sic) + $3.99 shipping new.
I’d probably go used.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012