The Thoroughbred

This is pretty much a stock racetrack movie filled with stock battling Irishmen, young love and crooked gamblers. If it had been made at MGM, it would have starred William Haines, but this was Tiffany, a Poverty Row producer, albeit an ambitious one, so there are some points of interest.

One is the camera-work. Director Richard Thorpe was famous for his cheap way of shooting scenes interestingly; he would start shooting a scene in a long shot, then as takes were blown, he would have the camera move in and continue. In this one, DP Max DuPont is more ambitious and manages some limited moving shots to show off the sets. Some of the ambitions are greater than ability. In the opening scene, when Wesley Barry and Onest Conley -- he was the real life son of Madame Sul-Te-Wan, with whom he has a couple of scenes -- are hoping for a job, they imagine Barry as a jockey riding Conley as a horse. It doesn't work, alas.

One scene that does work is the picnic scene. It looks like it was a pick-up scene, shot to bring the movie up to length. It doesn't make the movie good, but it is a pleasantly shot interlude. It's scenes like that that got Thorpe from Poverty Row to MGM.