Wings of the Morning (1937)

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This romantic comedy, set amidst the exciting world of horseracing is Britain's first Technicolor film. The story, set in the late 1880s, concerns the tempestuous love between an Irish nobleman and the fiery Spanish gypsy he loves. Despite the strident objections of his stuffy, blue-blooded parents,… More This romantic comedy, set amidst the exciting world of horseracing is Britain's first Technicolor film. The story, set in the late 1880s, concerns the tempestuous love between an Irish nobleman and the fiery Spanish gypsy he loves. Despite the strident objections of his stuffy, blue-blooded parents, the lovers wed. Unfortunately, the woman is widowed when her husband falls from a horse. The grieving lass returns to her wandering clan in Spain and does not return to Erin for thirty years. When she finally does, it is with a fabulous race horse and her beautiful granddaughter (the spitting image of the old woman in her youth) who masquerades as a boy so she can ride the horse in the Epsom Downs Derby. While awaiting the big race, the granddaughter meets a handsome Canadian horse trainer. He finds out her true sex, but says nothing. One night, he sees her dressed for a gala and seeing that she is truly a beauty falls deeply in love, even though he knows that the lass is engaged to another. Still the trainer and the bogus jockey fall in love. The excellent cinematography offers one of the film's highlights. Rather than following the Hollywood custom of using almost garish and vividly contrasting colors (to create a larger-than-life, almost cartoonish ambiance) in shooting, cinematographers Ray Rennahan and Jack Cardiff elected to film the story in beautiful pastel hues that add a soft pastoral feeling. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi