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Clip description
Patricia Blaydon (Shirley Ann Richards) has been invited by Lady Denvee (Bobbie Hunt) to ride with the local fox hunt. Lord Blaydon (Cecil Kellaway) gives some riding hints to a stranger on the road, then shows him some neighbourly kindness when the stranger, covered in mud, has fallen off his horse. The stranger is Lord Denvee (Frank Harvey). The two men have not yet formally met, because Blaydon was drunk when they called the night before.
Curator’s notes
This is a good example of Ken Hall’s level of technical accomplishment by the late 1930s. The scene uses back projection several times, in order to avoid taking a full crew on location. The hunt scenes are stock footage, bought from England. The shot of the castle with gates in front is probably a glass painting of a castle, matted onto the shot of the gates. Hall uses a wipe instead of a cut, in order to match the right to left movement of the car, a nice touch. The back projection resumes behind the wall as we see Blaydon help Lord Denvee into the saddle, and the whole thing is held more tightly together by the use of music throughout.
The shot of the horse falling in the water looks to have been staged for the film on location. This sequence, consisting of only four shots, plus the shot of Cecil Kellaway getting out of his car, are the only external location shots until the final sequence, where Blaydon meets the muddy Denvee on the road. All of these external shots would probably have been done quickly in one location, although the stunt rider and horse falling in the water may have required some preparation and care. Back projection became a constant tool in Cinesound’s films after 1935, when Hall visited Hollywood and bought the equipment necessary to do the work (see Thoroughbred, from 1936, the first Cinesound film that makes extensive use of back projection).
