Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

mark.waltz Alec Guennis is hysterically funny as Gully Jimson, the British Picasso, an over-the-top artist whose blurry vision of life is expressed only through his paint brush, but his various dealings with the assorted eccentrics he encounters, whether wealthy clients, protégées, landlords or love interests. Guennis takes the plunge into a truly bizarre creature, whether taking over a wealthy couple's apartment to paint a huge mural (and watching the apartment be destroyed in the process) or an abandoned church on the verge of being demolished. Guennis reveals this man's quiet but raspy voice being stronger through his artwork, looking at every empty wall as if he were Chaplin in "Modern Times" busy with his wrench turning every knob or button which came into his sight.While people who appreciate modern art might enjoy this more than standard audiences, it is always a pleasure to see Alec Guennis letting loose and going where no other actor would dare to go in such a bizarre role. He is surrounded by an exceptional supporting cast, and the film offers some breathtaking color photography and a delightfully sly screenplay.

dougdoepke The movie's more amusing than funny. How much amusing depends, I think, on how you respond to Guiness's archly eccentric performance. For me, his tics and mannerisms are so relentlessly insistent, I could just about see the wheels turning in the actor's head. Frankly, the characterization appears to conflate being profound with being radically different. Thus we're treated to streams of verbal abuses, airy unconcern for others, and cadging for money despite the profits from his works. All of this is proof, of course, that Jimson (Guiness) is a great artist, of which, we're assured by a gushing finale, he surely qualifies.Now, I'm certainly no art critic, but I think I've seen more interesting renderings of the human body in my doctor's office. But then, maybe you have to be there with the painting to get the right "visual feel". Of course, it's the compelling nature of this artistic vision that's supposed to excuse everything else. At the same time, a person need not be likable to be worthy, but then Guiness's screenplay does stack the deck in the latter regard. There are some amusing set-ups, usually at the expense of Phillistines, such as the ritzy, trashed apartment. Plus, Jimson's many amusing voice impersonations allow the versatile Guiness to show his stuff. Still, in my little book, acting honors should go to Kay Walsh (Coker). Her shrewish, stiff-necked wife refuses to be dominated by the flamboyant Guiness. Also, I like the unexpected twist with the super-sweet ex-wife Sara Monday (Houston). Nonetheless, the movie strikes me as needlessly smug in both its assumptions and its lead performance.

ilprofessore-1 Two of the former film-editor David Lean's contemporaries and collaborators in the pre-war British film industry --the cameraman Ronny Neame and the art director John Bryan—had also risen in the ranks by the time this film was made. This delightful film based on Joyce Cary's novel "The Horse's Mouth" with Neame as director and Bryan as the producer is blessed by an excellent script by the film's leading actor, Alec Guinness. To the cinema-going public who had come to know Guinness primarily as a leading member of Lean's stock company of British stage actors, and perhaps best as the taciturn quintessentially little English man he had played so often in the Ealing Studio comedies, it must have come as quite a surprise to see him cast against type as the incorrigible sponger, con-man and self-acknowledged artistic genius Gulley Jimpson. In many ways Guinness with his mild-mannered boyish persona would have seemed oddly miscast as the loud-mouth womanizing Jimpson, but Guinness manages to pull this off; perhaps because he is so wonderfully supported by two brilliant actresses –Kay Walsh as the steely barmaid,and Renee Houston as his still adoring ex-wife— both of them treat him more as a naughty boy gone wrong than as a sex-object. Therein lies the unique charm and originality of this film, one of the most believable every made about the life of a struggling and self-destructive artist.It's truly the Portrait of the Artist as a Bad Little Boy. Bad as Gulley is, and is he! he is never in the least unlikeable. Quite an accomplishment for Guinness. Another wonderful choice Neame and Bryan made was to use the outrageous expressionist paintings of an actual artist, John Bratby (1928-1992). They are either very terrible or very wonderful in the eyes of the beholder, but whatever the viewer's choice, for once in film these paintings are completely believable as the real work of a bohemian painter trying to break all the rules of the academy and perhaps succeeding. Finally, Neame and Bryan are to be congratulated on adapting the score Prokofiev wrote for an obscure Soviet film.

horrorfilmx I first saw this movie as part of a late-night Alec Guiness film festival when I was a teen. I was totally blown away by it. Among other things it inspired in me a love of Prokofiev and it also impelled me to seek out the book on which THE HORSE'S MOUTH was based. Sad to say once I got into Joyce Cary's novel my opinion of the movie went down several notches. The movie is very good but the book is brilliant. In fact it's only Guiness' deviations from the original novel that hurt his screenplay. There are depths to Cary's work that are rarely approached here and the addition of broad slapstick humor and the slightly cop-out ending are not improvements.Having said that, a book is a book and a movie is a movie and this movie is still very good. In addition to the excellent score we're given a fine cast. Guiness himself is so good that I can't read the book without picturing him as Gulley Jimson, and horror film fans will enjoy seeing Michael (HORROR OF Dracula, etc.) Gough as a rival artist and Ernest (BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN)Thesiger as Jimson's one-time patron driven past his limit by the eccentric artist.Enjoy the movie (but check out the source).