THE RAINBOW JACKET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 814, 4 March 1955, Page 19

THE RAINBOW JACKET

(Rank-Ealing) \VHEN it comes to picking the weekend movie, most filmgoers chance their money on a star. A few shrewd citizens follow their favourite producer or director, and the Submerged Tenth simply use a pin. I doubt if one half of one per cent pay any attention to the scriptwriter, unless it happens to -be W. Shakespeare or George B. Shaw, and now that I've seen The Rainbow Jacket ['m prepared to rejoin the other’ 99.5 per cent if someone will kindly move over and make room. It was the name of T. E. B. Clarke, Ealing’s. top scriptwriter, on the creditlist that persuaded me to hazard half a wheel and a’spare evening on The Rainbow Jacket-and speaking strictly for myself I would have been just as happy at home. To enjoy it (and the script is by no means spectacular) you must be capable of a dewy-eyed sentimentality about racing which it is quite outside my capacity to simulate. The hero is a small boy whose one ambition is to be a jockey. One or two of his elders threaten to spank some sense into him but, regrettably, no one does so and before he has achieved his ambition he has fallen into the clutches of crooked bookies, has thrown a race, and involved his’ widowed Mum (Kay Walshe) in a slight case of embezzlement. No one, fortunately, gets caught and all ends happily in a soft shower of folding money and a complete absence of moral sense. In my view (which may well be jaundiced) this is a sub-standard for Ealing. The photography often has an unfinished look, some of the studio mock-ups are grossly palpable fakes, and even Robert Morley fails to infuse any genuine liveliness into the show.