The Force of Guinness

No wave of destruction is so relentless or implacable as an artist. You can take that straight from 1958's The Horse's Mouth, a brilliant comedy directed by Ronald Neame from a witty screenplay by its star, Alec Guinness (adapted from a 1944 novel by Joyce Cary).

Guinness plays Gulley Jimson, a painter who looks and sounds a lot like Tom Waits. He lives on a ramshackle houseboat and spends his time harassing potential patrons or harassing his local publican (Kay Walsh) or painting. He does it all with a matter-of-fact momentum and is as likely to toss off a brilliant one liner about how he's really a terrible painter as he is one about how he's a great painter. He delivers every line with such little enthusiasm, and his statements are so baldly insubstantial, that he clearly seems to view linguistic communication as merely an annoying, occasionally unavoidable obligation.

Any lie is acceptable if it will get him money to eat, drink, or paint. Though occasionally food doesn't seem to be particularly important. He ravages the home of a wealthy acquaintance, selling off the furniture while the owners are away in Jamaica, and allows another artist, a sculptor (Michael Gough), to wreck the neighbour's flat, too.

The dialogue is relentless in its charm and wit as Jimson is in his demolition of civilisation. All in the name of art, as it should be.

The Horse's Mouth is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1602

The glassy rim could carry light away.
Across an empty sea we planted trees.
With birds the lonely whale was led astray.
The greedy door devoured twenty keys.
Denuding music drops a key to drink.
We lost the paper boat and took the steel.
But ev'ry day the ship traversed the brink.
The galley preps a final savage meal.
The circles show where drinkers fly to space.
Identified, the flying object fled.
The number writ confounds the cops a pace.
But velvet sky could pass for cosy bed.
The broken bottle popped balloons of blood.
A story mixed with sand and sandal mud.