The Rocking Horse Winner
Director: Anthony Pelissier
Year Released: 1950
Rating: 3.0
Competent film adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence short story about the price paid for addiction: the boy's father has a gambling problem, the boy's mother has a spending problem and the boy's two surrogate father-figures, his uncle and the newly-hired house servant, both bet on horses. After acquiring his own toy horse for Christmas, he rides it passionately; it serves as a metaphor for autoeroticism and Oedipal desire. Pelissier makes the points of the Lawrence piece clear without over-explanation, and John Mills puts in a good performance as the boy's sympathetic betting partner.
