Spoilers. I liked this film but it had two big plotholes: 1. Why did the millionaire couple just leave Gully in their flat? Seems a bit unlikely, even in the more trusting 1950s. 2. When the Tate did the retrospective on Gully's work, why didn't he get any money from publicity - surely there would have been people paying him for interviews etc?
shareHaven't seen this excellent movie for years, sadly, so I can't comment on your #1. But re #2, I think you have a mistaken impression of how publicity for artists (and actors, at least lesser ones) works.
In my younger days in the 70s & 80s, when I was an actor supposedly on the way up, I gave a few magazine interviews relating to quite successful UK TV dramas I was involved in; and over the years I have given many to mainly local newspapers about theatre productions. At no time was it remotely suggested that I would be paid for them - indeed, most people in the arts (and their employers) are so desperate for publicity that they would happily do the paying (some do, via an expensive publicity/PR manager).
Perhaps things are different today, at least for big stars, but I am quite certain that in the 1950s in the UK the possibility of anyone being paid for an interview by the press would not have arisen for anyone in ANY walk of life, let alone the arts.
Basically, this is a silly movie in which people do silly things. However, I think the idea was that the maid was supposed to make sure Gully left before she locked up, but she allowed him to bamboozle her into giving him the key.
shareI have known many bohemian types -- like Gully -- and they all had this marvelous knack of inveigling their way into places and getting people to provide for them. Nothing ever came of it, and they often did some damage along the way, but they weren't bad people, just amoral rather than immoral. They all seemed to have a grand sense of entitlement, as if -- as artists -- we all of us owed them a living; again, just like Gully. You just had to watch them, or they'd put your name down as their landlord on a housing benefit claim form, or sell your property behind your back, or invite all their friends over to stay. They were the kind of people that gave the unemployed a bad name, but people generally felt so sorry for them that they got away with it. Of course, The Horses Mouth started life as a novel by Joyce Cary, but the film isn't quite the same as Cary's novel, and I do wonder if it's partly based on Guiness's own experiences with bohemians. It does seem to be written with some affection. And I think that's the secret, all of the people Gully Jimson encountered seemed to love him, as do we, of course.
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