Wings of the Morning (New World). Made in England, first directorial job of a onetime Fox cutter, named Harold Schuster, Wings of the Morning appears by liberal analysis to be a technicolor romance about the Epsom Derby. It takes a very liberal analysis to boil down the impudent, abstracted charm of the picture into this or any other trade category. Wings of the Morning glows with the kind of imagery which used to absorb the late Donn Byrne, upon some of whose stories it is based. Its tinted surfaces are vivid with gypsies, Irish hunters, girls in boys' clothing and effective landscape shots. Its structure, like that of the Byrne stories, is subject to interpolation every time a colorful episode, not included in the original scheme, seems possible.
A handsome horse was what Lord Clontarf (Leslie Banks) saw first in the gypsy camp, but Marie (Annabella) blushed because she thought his comment, ''What a beauty!" was inspired by her. Later the Lord's reaction was more nearly what she wanted: when some highborn ladies snubbed her at a dinner party, Clontarf married her. The ill fate that brought him his death in the hunting field five months later banished Marie from his land. Gypsy lore indicated that in four generations, when "the blood was cleansed" she might return. Back in Ireland after fleeing from the Spanish Revolution, Marie's granddaughter Marie (Annabella, this time a blonde) tumbles off Wings of the Morning, her grand mother's Derby candidate, into the life of Kerry (Henry Fonda). When Kerry swaps Marie six nags for Wings of the Morning, the gypsies make her go and beg her bargain back. What makes the scene confusing for Marie is that she still has on trousers, and that Kerry is bathing in a small tin tub; Sex, however, is established on its conventional lines by the time Kerry's Destiny Bay runs against Marie's Wings in the Derby. Her Spanish fiancé, Diego (Teddy Underdown), has claimed her and she would have married him if he had not renounced her when it seemed that Wings was going to be disqualified, leaving her dowerless. When she finds Kerry he is once more taking a bath, this time in an Irish stream. But now Marie does not mind. As a bonus with the first color picture produced in England, Producer Robert T. Kane has tossed in some songs by John McCormack, given famed Derby Jockey Steve Donoghue, six times winner of the Epsom Derby (1915-17-21-22-23-25), the leg-up on. Wings.
The Man Who Could Work Miracles (London Films). When, for his own amusement, one of the god-like creatures who inhabit the firmament of Author H. G. Wells decides to endow a single mortal with the power to work miracles, his choice by pure chance lights upon George McWhirter Fotheringay (Roland Young). No one is more surprised than Mr. Fotheringay at what consequently happens when, in the course of a public house argument about metaphysics, he orders the chandelier to turn upside down. The chandelier does so. When Mr. Fotheringay lacks presence of mind to order it back into place, it falls on the floor and breaks. Thrown out of the saloon for conduct unbecoming to a gentleman, Mr. Fotheringay goes home to experiment with his new found knack. He conjures rabbits, kittens, gold watches and finally a bunch of grapes which he nibbles contentedly before he falls asleep.