Alec Guiness is Gulley Jimson, a rabid artist just released from jail. His work is pretty good, according to the consensus, though perhaps not worth as much as he thinks it is. Guiness is one of these rough-hewn artists. You know the type: Villon, Kerouac, Pollack. When they're not deeply immersed in their art, they're always pinching something -- somebody's wallet or somebody's derrière. They're unshaven and ragged and vulgar.
An upper-class couple hire him to do a painting in their elegant home while they're away. Guiness decides to do an epic of Lazarus rising from the dead. The work covers an entire wall and is mostly feet of all sorts, old and cramped, or young and fresh. The couple return and are outraged to find their wall covered with huge "trotters." There is also some business about Guiness allowing a sculptor to use the upper story but the block he hauls in is so heavy that it crashes through the floor and so forth.
It's not at all slapstick though. It's thoughtfully written and directed, and it deals with the place of the artist in society. Thomas Mann and James Joyce would have appreciated it.
And if Guiness heaps wreckage upon the complacent and philistine middle-class, the community treats him and his work with equal contempt. He concocts a scheme to have students pay for his supervision while they paint Noah's Ark on the vast wall of a ruined chapel that is just about to be demolished -- and is, the moment the heroic work is finished.
Guiness gives us some hints about appreciating the work we see. He urges his listeners to "feel the bath tub" and "feel the woman." The paintings are by John Bratby, about whom I know nothing, and I'm not an art critic, but I kind of liked the position they occupied between naturalistic "pictures" of things and interpretations of those things that are so stylized as to be unrecognizable. Oh, John Marin is a good example of what I mean. But the paintings themselves are lurid beyond belief, as if the objects had been stripped of their coats and their inner working laid bare. They're attention-getting but pretty ugly. They reminded me of a poem I had to read in high school, something about ox tails hanging in a butcher's window, that turned those rude delicacies into the most revolting articles imaginable. Gag me with a spoon.
Anyhow, this may not be Ealing's greatest comedy. Guiness and his harsh voice get a little wearying after a while, and once we get used to his outrageous perfidy we might have to wait for a while between laughs. But the laughs are there, no question. I enjoyed, too, the way the serious questions about art and its place in our social fabric were nicely blended with the more playful stuff.
An upper-class couple hire him to do a painting in their elegant home while they're away. Guiness decides to do an epic of Lazarus rising from the dead. The work covers an entire wall and is mostly feet of all sorts, old and cramped, or young and fresh. The couple return and are outraged to find their wall covered with huge "trotters." There is also some business about Guiness allowing a sculptor to use the upper story but the block he hauls in is so heavy that it crashes through the floor and so forth.
It's not at all slapstick though. It's thoughtfully written and directed, and it deals with the place of the artist in society. Thomas Mann and James Joyce would have appreciated it.
And if Guiness heaps wreckage upon the complacent and philistine middle-class, the community treats him and his work with equal contempt. He concocts a scheme to have students pay for his supervision while they paint Noah's Ark on the vast wall of a ruined chapel that is just about to be demolished -- and is, the moment the heroic work is finished.
Guiness gives us some hints about appreciating the work we see. He urges his listeners to "feel the bath tub" and "feel the woman." The paintings are by John Bratby, about whom I know nothing, and I'm not an art critic, but I kind of liked the position they occupied between naturalistic "pictures" of things and interpretations of those things that are so stylized as to be unrecognizable. Oh, John Marin is a good example of what I mean. But the paintings themselves are lurid beyond belief, as if the objects had been stripped of their coats and their inner working laid bare. They're attention-getting but pretty ugly. They reminded me of a poem I had to read in high school, something about ox tails hanging in a butcher's window, that turned those rude delicacies into the most revolting articles imaginable. Gag me with a spoon.
Anyhow, this may not be Ealing's greatest comedy. Guiness and his harsh voice get a little wearying after a while, and once we get used to his outrageous perfidy we might have to wait for a while between laughs. But the laughs are there, no question. I enjoyed, too, the way the serious questions about art and its place in our social fabric were nicely blended with the more playful stuff.