The Rainbow Jacket

This is a fine little Ealing film from the great Basil Dearden - lots of brilliant outdoor shots of various race courses around southern England; really captures the colour and excitement of racing (I don't even like racing or gambling on horses). Okay, some of the racing shots are obviously shot in some empty field somewhere and cut together with racing footage but the effect is good. Great shots of Brentford and west London and some of the main line train stations. There's the Griffin Pub in Brentford (right near the football ground, incidentally) and an incredibly gruff, working class area that is now for the rich only. That's the great thing about these Ealing films - they all give you an amazing insight into a society that has changed so much in just 50 years.

Simple but effective script from Tibby Clarke, too.

I love horses and the racing world and so that is a bonus but I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The characters were believable and likeable with the backdrop and humour of the stable lads amusing. I read that this was based on a true story and it seems probable - just the sort of thing of that era. Interesting from a social history point of view. It was fun to see Sid James and Wilfred Hyde White in the cameo roles. OK the close up of the riders was a bit unconvincing but it is a film of it's time and I'm rating it 8. I find it strange that one of the two lead actors, Fella Edmonds as the young jockey, scarcely gets a mention.

Interesting to see that Sports movies basically haven't changed a lot in 70 years. This is more of a matinee from Ealing Studios with a cast of well known British actors of their day, although Bill Owen wouldn't gain national fame until twenty years later. A knowledge or love of Horse racing isn't necessary to enjoy this tale that's watchable but not great.

Bill Owen had just starred for Dearden & Relph in a stark black & white drama about boxing called 'The Square Ring', and Ealing presumably felt the need to lighten up a bit for their next film shot largely on location in immaculate Technicolor by Otto Heller. Hence the title.

A subplot concerns money owed by Owen to a loan shark played by an unbilled Bernard Lee (also unbilled are David Hemmings, and Katie Johnson in an amusing cameo), one of whose goons cuts Owen's lip with a beer glass, thus serving to remind us that this is still the Britain of ration books and spivs. But the subplot simply prolongs the film without actually making it any more interesting.

Seventh-billed Honor Blackman as Edward Underdown's wife looks ravishing in Technicolor - and in jodhpurs provides some Bond Girl glamour - but is largely absent from the second half of the film.

I quite enjoyed this slightly over-long tale of a young, aspiring jockey. There isn't much about the nags that "Georgie" (Fella Edmonds) doesn't know and he yearns to get a race. That might just prove possible when he encounters disgraced former champion "Sam" (Bill Owen) at a meeting where he successfully calls the result. Next thing, he's got a job as a stable boy where he could get a ride for the wealthy "Mr. Logan" (Robert Morley). He is a loyal young man who really only wants to help his mother (Kay Walsh) and now, to repay his mentor. It's the latter man who might put a spanner in his works, though - he has got into some trouble and now needs a "favour" from his young protegée. Just managing to get away with that, we just know there will be more unscrupulousness to come - but maybe, just maybe, "Sam" might just grow a pair and save the young man from having to follow in his inauspicious footsteps? Basil Dearden has assembled a solid cast here with an on-form Morley, Wilfrid Hyde-White very much playing to type and a few regulars like Sid James and Michael Trubshawe in there too. Edmonds does fine as the engaging and honourable young lad and by the conclusion, I suspect everyone wanted a few quid on his horse. Sure, it's all a bit predictable but so many of these films were just designed to take our attention from the post-war ravages that still dogged most of daily life in Britain. This one does that quite engagingly and is worth a watch.