The Rocking Horse Winner (1949)

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Three superb horror films of the 1940s have experienced separate fates. DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) seems to have been recognized immediately as a great achievement. THE QUEEN OF SPADES (1949) developed its reputation over decades; it is now highly-regarded by many viewers and critics, but still not as well-known as it deserves to be. THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER (1949) remains obscure, rarely seen, rarely praised.

The reasons for this obscurity are themselves obscure. I would call THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER as frightening and as beautifully crafted as DEAD OF NIGHT or THE QUEEN OF SPADES. From the cinematography of Desmond Dickinson to the music of William Alwyn, from the hideous eyes of the horse itself to a production design that turns an ordinary middle-class home into a labyrinth of disconnected stairways and narrow corridors, from the often painfully intense performances to the well-paced and escalating direction, THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER provides everything a horror film should. It even anticipates a later film, REPULSION, in its use of expanding sets to imply a mental breakdown. Why, then, despite its obvious merits, has it never been popular?

The trouble, I think, has nothing to do with the film, but might perhaps be caused by the expectations of horror film viewers.

Many people see horror as a genre, and they bring to it the expectations of genre. Yet horror is actually a mood, and can be conjured up with an endless variety of plots, characters, metaphors, images, and settings, too many to be limited by the constraints of any genre. At the same time, many viewers prefer horror as escapism, as a way to substitute imaginary troubles for the complications of everyday life.

One expectation that people often bring to horror is a touch of the supernatural. Both DEAD OF NIGHT and THE QUEEN OF SPADES offer hints of the supernatural right from their opening sequences, and maintain these touches from beginning to end. In contrast, the supernatural elements of THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER gleam out later in the film, as a reflection of everyday troubles in an ordinary family, and these elements remain muted until the climax. The film offers tensions beautifully developed and sustained, but these are the tensions of life as we know it, not of life as we fear it might be just beyond human perception. The supernatural elements are integrated fully into the plot, and they bring a nightmarish power to the climax, but the tragedy at work, here, is a human tragedy, caused by human desires and human misperceptions.

This emphasis on tragedy and grief takes THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER far from any hint of escapism. At the end of the film, there is no hope for any return to normalcy, no suggestion that the story's evils can be repaired. What is done is done, and it hurts. This puts the film in a category similar to the bleak psychological dramas of Bergman, dramas that I consider the most harrowing horror films ever made, but films unlikely to win the praise of many horror viewers.

It saddens me. A superb horror film deserves a wide audience, yet sometimes, the viewers most likely to embrace a film of that type stay away. All I can do is to encourage as many people as possible to see THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER and to reach their own conclusions.