Film Forum

(1958, Ronald Neame) Back from the pen on his houseboat via a stolen bike, Guinness’ scruffy, raspy-voiced painter Gulley Jimson keeps those “masterpieces” coming, even covering an abandoned church’s wall with a mural as the wreckers are about to move in. Oscar nomination for Guinness’ own adaptation of Joyce Cary’s novel. Approx. 97 min. 35mm.

Reviews

“Guinness’ Gulley Jimson is a gifted, wild-eyed painter who has fallen on hard times, a whiskery misanthrope who thinks nothing of filching his wealthy friends' belongings and then pawning them to buy paint. He's an egotist, yet it's not personal glory he's after: He's chasing the purest and most glorious expression of his vision, the ability to translate the magnificence of all that he sees in his head onto the welcoming blankness of the canvas.”
– Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice

“Guinness adapted Joyce Cary’s story into this droll screenplay about a brilliant, eccentric, egocentric—and perpetually starving—artist whom some consider a genius.”
– Leonard Maltin