Devil on Horseback

This fairly standard story of how Jeremy Spenser wants to win horse races at all costs and learns the price, contains the usual assortment of racetrack eccentrics, particularly Liam Redmond who outbrogues Barry Fitzgerald in a John Ford movie; most notably, it stars Googie Withers and her real life husband, John McCallum, as a horse owner and trainer who mentor the boy -- and fall in love of course. It's one of the last leading roles for Miss Withers, who was so distinguished by this point that a little of her was enough to distinguish any picture.

It's beautifully lensed by Denny Densham, whose long career in the GPO documentary unit gave him the skills to handle landscape and long-distance movement. He rarely got the chance to be the cinematographer on a feature. Here, his shots of races seem to float.