Song of the Road

When the council votes to get rid of its horse and carts in favor of motorized lorries, Bransby Williams buys the horse he's been working with and takes to the road to find a place for them both. Yet wherever he goes, he thinks of the friends he makes on the way and pushes them towards new and technological methods.

John Baxter's movie is intensely nostalgic for the old ways, with its images of horse-drawn haying and medicine shows, yet clear-eyed in its understanding that the world requires a head as well as a heart. Williams knows what's what, and forces others into doing what's right for them, even though they are equally willing to sacrifice themselves for him.

I looked at this movie because it has Tod Slaughter in a supporting role, playing a villain yearning for Peggy Novak, but there are other pleasures here, in Jack Parker's bucolic landscapes and the performances of Muriel George, David Burnaby, Percy Parsons and, of course, Polly the Horse.

It's the late 1930's and internal combustion mechanisation is taking over from horsepower. This is a road trip of a man and his horse but it could have been so much better, especially the middle section of the film which contributes little. Fascinating from a rural viewpoint as horses, and workers, become obsolete but the acting is rather wooden with poor continuity - it feels as if it was staged by a team used to making silent films, often with exaggerated acting, which of course had also recently become obsolete. Its attitude towards women is also typical of the period.