This blog was begun on the night of April 4, 2021:
Continuing our Mills Retrospective, tonight we saw Sir John take a supporting role, in "The Rocking Horse Winner"(1949), an unnerving drama with a supernatural element. Valerie Hobson plays "Hester Grahame", an upper-class Englishwoman with elegant tastes. She spends so much money on clothes and furnishings that it's breaking the family finances. Making matters worse, her husband is a gambler with no talent for cards. They're in debt on their house and everything else they've bought on credit, and now a collections man has come to the door and is promising to remain until he gets paid.
It's not a pretty picture, especially during the holiday season, but on Christmas Day, the Grahame's adolescent son Paul is given a rocking horse as a gift. In the movie's opening scene, we see him forming a bond with his parents' new handyman "Bassett" (John Mills), a former stable boy who knows horse racing and likes to place a bet. Paul asks Bassett to put some money down for him, too - just a few shillings - and soon he's hooked as well. The rocking horse gift stems from his newfound interest.
Things are going bad for his parents, though, and Paul's uncle (his mother's brother) has to bail them out financially on more than one occasion. Like all kids, Paul feels their strife in his soul, and wills himself to win enough money at the track to pull his mom and dad out of debt. One day his mother gets a strange call from her housekeeper to come home. "It's about Paul, ma'am. He spends all day on that rocking horse, and the way he rides it is scaring me. It's like he's overcome". In fact we see Paul riding the wooden horse, and he looks as if he's in a trance, and a mad one; his eyes are aflame as he rocks back and forth to the tipping point, whipping his inanimate mount with a riding crop.
But when his mum questions him about the housekeeper's worry, Paul only shrugs and says, "Don't worry momma, riding makes me feel lucky".
Paul continues his rocking horse reveries, and after each one he goes to Bassett with the name of the next winner at the track. At first, Bassett tries to get him to change his picks, because they seem like also-rans. But sure enough, Paul is right every time. Soon they've got 1200 pounds saved up, then 10,000, and then 70,000! "I told you I was lucky", he says. They keep their winnings stashed in a lockbox out in Bassett's shed, with their secret known only to the uncle. Paul starts paying off his mother's debts, then giving her money to buy all the things she's accustomed to. Suddenly she thinks his rocking horse rides are just fine. But the rides are beginning to take a toll on Paul. He's losing focus in other areas of his life, and his vitality is beginning to ebb.
I can't tell you what awaits Paul and his horse, or for that matter Bassett and their winnings, either. But what seems on the surface like a tale of easy money has a sinister underpinning. Parts of the film feel and look like an episode of "The Twilight Zone", with cockeyed camera angles and high contrast lighting. Does the rocking horse have a life of it's own, or is it the house that's affecting Paul? He's particularly well-played by a child actor named John Howard Davies, who we saw as "Oliver Twist" last Christmas. John Mills is good as Bassett the kindly handyman, who loves Paul like a son and becomes a surrogate for his absent father. But this is Valerie Hobson's movie and she's perfect as the spendthrift mother who sees her extravagant lifestyle as her birthright.
Taken from a short story by D.H. Lawrence, "The Rocking Horse Winner" gets Two Big Thumbs Up, and has an eeriness that'll stick with you long after the movie is over. Highly recommended. /////
Regarding crime films, we've become so used to the Twist Ending that we can almost feel cheated when we don't get one. And yet it wasn't always that way. I've found myself waiting for The Twist in the last couple of noirs in our John Mills marathon, but became resigned to the realization that the stories were not about a "big reveal", but rather the psychological makeup of the characters. The same was true of the previous night's Mills Movie : "Town on Trial"(1957), in which JM plays "Superintendent Halloran", a hard as nails homicide detective to whom everyone is a suspect, and all are guilty until he says otherwise.
He's on a murder case that unfolds at a posh country club in a suburban English town, the kind of place that has winding two lane roads and expansive green lawns. The victim is a voluptuous young woman whose membership at the club was dubious, and gained only by favors to certain boardmembers. In truth, she was a trashy sort, an unrefined exhibitionist that the men loved and the women hated.
Right off the bat, Mills has a set of suspects. First and foremost is the manager of the club (Derek Farr), a playboy type who - though he's married - had an affair with the victim that left her pregnant. Next on the list is a timid, thirtysomething man who lives at home with his mother. He's a schizophrenic and not a club member, but he knew the victim and had designs on her (it's a small town and the man is outwardly normal, and handsome).
Lastly there's the local doctor (Charles Coburn), a Canadian who is secretive about his past and who is caught berating the mentally ill man, as if trying to convince him he's the killer. Mills at first thinks the doctor is trying to frame the poor guy. This will lead to a Red Herring, but there's no doubt Coburn acts strangely throughout the film. This is one of the reasons I was waiting for a twist.
Coburn also has a niece, who works as his nurse and doubles as his protector. She is played by an actress named Barbara Bates, who we saw and mentioned in a small but important part at the very end of "All About Eve" a couple weeks ago. Miss Bates has a look and screen presence that is unforgettable, and though she never became a star her story must still be mentioned because it is one of the most tragic in Hollywood history. You can read about her on her IMDB page, but if you see her roles in movies you will agree that she was a good actress.
The killer has left a note at the crime scene with an explicit Bible verse : Ezekiel 23-5. I'll leave you to read it for yourself, but for Mills, it leaves open the possibility that anyone could be the murderer in this prudish but hypocritical town. As for the townspeople, they find the whole affair distasteful ("Ohh, really....a murder, how tacky"), and resolve to cooperate as little as possible. All this does is cause Mills to put the hammer down even harder. He's a real prick in this one. :)
But then a second girl is found dead, and this time it's the daughter of a local couple. Supposedly straitlaced, it turns out she had a wild side also, which apparently drove the killer crazy. Again, the bible verse is important.
I was still waiting for the twist, and at one point I even suspected Barbara Bates. But the story turned out once again to be psychologically driven rather than by plot. It's as much about the British class system as it is about the murder case, but still quite entertaining, and John Mills is at the top of his game here. It's a lot of fun to watch him play a hard guy. Keep an eye on Charles Coburn, too. There's something that doesn't add up about his character.
"Town on Trial" is part mystery/part social commentary, but very involving and it gets Two Big Thumbs Up from this reviewer. The Hitchcockian ending is a nice touch, too.
Well, I don't mean to alarm you, but we're starting to run low on Mills Films. I'm gonna keep looking, but so far I've only located a couple more that are free on Youtube. For the moment we're still good, but I thought I should prepare you for the inevitable (though I'll do whatever it takes to postpone it).
Because he's John Freakin' Mills and we love him!
That's all for the moment. Have a great evening. Tons of love as always!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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