The Galloping Major

Basil Radford is a fine judge of horseflesh, but he has no interest in betting. He wants to own a racehorse. He forms a syndicate to do so in his quiet London neighborhood of Lamb's Green, and they buy the wrong horse. Nothing loath, they train it anyway.... for the Grand National.

Henry Cornelius follows up his classic PASSPORT TO PIMLICO with another movie about the peculiar madness of the English. Although it lacks the general insanity of his better known picture, it has the funniest horse race I've ever seen on celluloid. With Jimmy Hanley, Rene Ray, Joyce Grenfell, and A.E. Matthews.

The comedies of Henry Cornelius are reliable for their genuinely good humour prevalent in all the mass of actors, and in his films they tend to gather in cheerful crowds. The point here is that all the successes happen by accident, nothing is really intended, Basil Radford runs a pet shop, nothing else, while Hugh Griffith comes haunting him for his debts, and it looks rather bleak from the start in a dreary neighbourhood as well. But Basil has a daughter, and she is the sunshine of the film, inspiring everyone with exhilaration in spite of some accidents on the way. They buy a horse, and it's the wrong one, it runs away and is painted in irrecognizable colours, it is transported far away from London, and so it goes - the race is on, and ends in the same style, in total apparent defeat, which by accident is turned to the opposite, but not without some nerve-racking business on the way - Hugh Griffith himself has to be ultimately carried out on a stretcher. But the good humour conquers all, and it's a hell of a merry-go-round, risking never to stop in its whirling bolting in further mishaps, but ultimately you will end up as cheerful as any of all the hundreds of actors in the syndicate for racing an impossible horse.

I have never been very fond of films which have horse racing as their subject and this film reinforced my view.I presume that this is supposed to be a comedy but it fails to raise a laugh despite all of the considerable talents involved with this film. In fact I found more interest in viewing Belsize Park in the fifties.I think about the only joke is showing the area,called Lambs Green in the film with a large factory and a bus garage.Now that is a laugh.A cinema is featured,maybe the old Classic in Pond Street. Also of interest are the London buses of that era which I remember well.As well there is Alfie Bass shouting Star News Standard.In those days London had 3 evening papers.Otherwise the film is a bore which doesn't deserve its high rating.

This is a very silly fantasy, but also a very enchanting view of the early fifties not as they really were but as we wish they were. In reality, the early post war years in Britain were austere and bleak, and films such as this would have cheered people up just by it's absurdness and innocence. It is very well acted and all of the cast seem to have entered into the spirit of taking part in this film just for the fun of taking part.

The films directed by Henry Cornelius can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Passport to Pimlico (1948) -- one of Britain's most successful comedies -- The Galloping Major (1951) -- Genevieve (1953) -- possibly Britain's number one combined box office and critical success for the year -- I Am a Camera (1955) -- which failed to fill audiences with enthusiasm but nonetheless provoked the ire of the censor and thus became a top money-maker by default -- and finally Next To No Time (1957) which failed dismally even though it starred Kenneth More and was deliberately kept back from release until More scored a major triumph with A Night To Remember.

So how does The Galloping Major fare in this line-up? Very well, in my opinion. It has a lively script with several very ingenious touches. I love his moral-ground introduction in which A.E. Matthews lays down the law to our hopeful hero, but in the very next scene we discover that his motivation is more than somewhat curdled. The same goes for the introductory and following scenes featuring Hugh Griffith.

All the players bar one are at the top of their form. True, Kenneth More has little to do and doesn't really look the film director type; but the big letdown is Raymond Glendenning who hogs the camera so avidly, it seems like he's never going to let go! For a while there, it seems like Cornelius is going to make a thing of double-decker buses. This doesn't follow through, but happily, transport is certainly one of the main items on his agenda.

In all, despite Gendenning and an adequate but not exactly overly charismatic hero, plus a few slow patches here and there, The Galloping Major is a British character-filled delight.