The Rocking Horse Winner
by Anthony Pelissier
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DVD details
Actor: Hugh Sinclair, John Howard Davies, John Mills, Ronald Squire, Valerie HobsonDirector: Anthony Pelissier
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: ROC060DVD
Studio: Homevision
DVD Reviews of The Rocking Horse Winner
DVD Review: Unusual British Film
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Rocking Horse Winner" is adapted from the out-of-print short story by D. H. Lawrence. An upper-middle class family in post-war Britain is strapped for cash and continually spending beyond their means. The mother is played by Valerie Hobson, who starred as Estella a few years earlier in the extraordinary adaptation of David Lean's "Great Expectations." She is impatient with her husband's relatively low wages and wishes continually for more funds, seemingly not caring about the source of the money. Her young son (John Howard Davies, who later produced "Fawlty Towers") hears her pleas and soon is betting on horse racing with the help of their gardener, Bassett (played by the peerless Sir John Mills). Surprisingly, the boy seems to be rather lucky and begins to win, but complications soon arise.The "Rocking Horse Winner" is not particularly well-known, and it definitely deserves a larger audience. The film is highly enjoyable and unpredictable, with some unexpected eerie and sinister elements. The acting is generally good and somewhat larger than life, although Valerie Hobson portrays the mother in perhaps too unsympathetic a light. A highlight of the film is the demonic rocking horse that the boy receives for Christmas; the scenes with the boy riding it into a frenzy are frighteningly unforgettable, and perhaps more than a bit oedipal in nature. The DVD transfer is quite good, although no subtitles have been recorded - a shame considering the sometimes thick accents of some of the actors. Overall, the "Rocking Horse Winner" is a champion - an unusual, small British film that should be much better known.
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Extras: Three different versions of "Rocking Horse Winner" are included. The most interesting is a 22 minute short film by Michael Almereyda, who later directed the 2000 movie "Hamlet" starring Ethan Hawke. The short is set in the present and stars Eric Stoltz. Filmed in a grainy manner with pixelation used throughout, it's interesting but the acting is often poor and the story is disjointed. The two other versions are audio-only: a reading taken from public radio and excerpts from a libretto opera. Highly unusual extras!
Description of The Rocking Horse Winner
Based on one of D.H. Lawrence?s most enduring short works, this haunting tale of a boy driven to the limits of his own life by his mother?s wanton materialism is finally available on DVD for the first time. Plagued by his mother?s obsession with money a young, introverted boy discovers that by riding his toy rocking horse he can predict the outcome of future horse races. With the aid of his uncle and the family gardener, the boy finds an unlikely answer to the financial problems that are turning his parents into strangers. But the more he wins, the more his mother spends and the stakes get higher and higher.![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
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