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The equine family is listed first in the opening credits, followed by the cast of "those creatures called humans." Thoroughbreds on a Kentucky meadow, an idyllic vision and a declaration of tradition: "You'll never be worth your grass unless you always remember the first Law of the Turf—Run straight and run fast!" The protagonist-narrator enters as a scrawny newborn foal, her POV at the stable blurs and oscillates before settling on J. Farrell MacDonald's wiggling eyebrows. A yearling's education, which includes playing silent witness to gambling owner (Henry B. Walthall) and duplicitous wife (Gertrude Astor). First and last race, a nosedive at the finish line (Capra's Broadway Bill), a resigned stare down the shotgun's barrel. Healed and sold, a romance via documentary shots of frisky animals before the fate of beasts of burden. "As for me, my life became miserable drudgery." Along the lines of Whitman and Frost, a gratifying poem from John Ford. Changes of fortune, the ruined aristocrat peddling bourbon under the bleachers, the trainer turned traffic cop reveling in the opportunity to give his former master a ticket. Estranged daughters, the little heiress (Peaches Jackson) and the zippy filly christened "Confederacy." Slavery and slapstick, cruelty and tenderness, the hoary and the experimental. After a junkyard brawl, the Derby trophy for the old gray mare means a reunion and a satisfied mind. "With us Kentuckians, pride of race is everything!" Dovzhenko evinces a memory in Arsenal, and Bresson takes it from there four decades later. With Belle Stoddard, Winston Miller, Malcolm Waite, and George Reed. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |