Tanbark and Turf

This entry into RKO's Sportscope series of one-reel shorts offers some insight into the training of harness horses, both on the racetrack and for country roads.

There are some slow-motion sequences to demonstrate how the horses move, offering some insight into the grace of these superbly trained animals. At about eight minutes, it's a decent look at a bit of an era that modern city-dwellers no longer experience.

The soundtrack is a bit too chipper for my taste, but not inappropriate.

Tanbark and Turf (1955)

** (out of 4)

Peter Roberts narrates this Sportscope short from RKO, which tries to explain how horses are bred so that they can be turned into harness racers. That's pretty much the entire "story" to this documentary and if you've seen any of these shorts from RKO then you know that there are more hits than misses. As is normally the case with the Sportscope series, this one deals with a somewhat interesting story but sadly the movie doesn't do anything with it. I'm never quite sure what these films are trying to do because they often just ramble on about the subject without knowing what they're trying to say. Countless studios released shorts like this one and the best of them (Passing Parade, Pete Smith Specialty) knew what story they wanted to tell and they did it. This one here clearly wants to explain harness racers but the way they go about it is just downright boring, uninteresting and in the end everything they're saying just gets lumped together.

Horses are trained to pull buggies and carriages. They are also trained in harness racing. The most compelling is watching these horses run in slow motion. It's an RKO-Pathe Sportscope short. It's not the most compelling of subject matters but I love some slow motion horse action. It's great to see all that straining muscle power.