Kings of the Turf is a 1941 short film (10 minutes) directed by Del Frazier.
It is a documentary short about horse breeding and horse racing. The film starts at a California horse breeding ranch. A heavily pregnant mare is guided inside a stable, where she delivers a foal named Mortimer or "Morty". Morty is shown as a newborn wobbling on his legs, as a 1-year-old being trained to accept a harness, and a 2-year-old being trained to race. Morty, as it turns out, is not being trained to be a Kentucky Derby-style thoroughbred, but as a harness racer
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Tropes:
- Amusement Park: The county fair, which has games and rides and circus attractions, and also Morty running his first harness race.
- Big Game: The harness race at the end where Morty makes his racing debut. The film is somewhat vague but Morty appears to run third.
- Documentary: A documentary short about the breeding of a horse for harness racing. The film includes a sequence explaining the difference between a pace horse (pairs of left and right legs move together) and a trotter like Morty (diagonally opposed legs move together).
- Manipulative Editing: Pay attention to the markings on the horse, and it is plain that at least three different horses play the part of "Morty."
- Narrator: Knox Manning provides voiceover narration recounting the training of a harness horse.
- Overcrank: A slow-motion effect is used to show the different gaits of horses on a track, and specifically the difference between a pace and a trot.
- Panicky Expectant Father: As the mare is taken into the stable to deliver Morty, a stallion that is supposedly Morty's father is shown pacing back and forth outside. The narrator says "It's papa who goes to pieces" and that the father has "been making a general nuisance of himself."
- Pun: The pregnant mare being led into the stables is said to be "infanticipating" the birth of a foal.
- Time Skip
- "A year's growth and development" covers the skip from Morty as a newborn foal, to Morty as a 1-year-old being fitted with a harness.
- "Two years of steady training" skip Morty ahead to the big harness race.
- The X of Y: Kings of the Turf
