Phar Lap
Directed by Simon Wincer
Written by David Williamson
1983, Australia
If you had to pick out the greatest movie of all time about horse racing, it has to be that of Phar Lap. Most movies dealing with the subject tend to get a little gooey – or too gangster-ish. This is sometimes appropriate but gets a little wearing. But the Phar Lap movie of 1983 doesn’t fall into either of these traps.
The story is a true one which always makes such films better. It broadly tells the story of the horse by the same name – a champion thoroughbred whose amazing achievements really resonated with the great Australian public during the early years of the Great Depression.
In real life, Phar Lap was foaled in New Zealand, but raced in Australia trained by Harry Telford. The horse’s achievements were truly remarkable – particularly as he came from relatively humble origins.
Phar Lap won Australia’s biggest and most famous race, the Melbourne Cup, along with an AJC Derby, two Cox Plates and 19 other races. He even travelled to Mexico to win the Agua Caliente Handicap in Tijuana, setting a new track record in what turned out to be his final race. He died in 1932 after a sudden illness in mysterious circumstances.
The movie portrays this mysterious death. Phar Lap may have been poisoned by bookmakers or may have been poisoned accidentally from pesticides sprayed from a plane while grazing in California after the race in Mexico. No-one knows for sure what happened – but experts confirmed that it was a large ingestion of arsenic that caused the horse’s death.
It’s a great movie whether or not you love racing and portrays the Aussies’ love of gambling on racing very well. Of course, these days you can bet on exchanges like betfair.com, wherever you are – and with exchanges like Betfair, we can all be the bookie as well as the gambler.
But in those days, it was all about on-track betting and the bookies stood to gain or lose fortunes depending on a little illegal insider knowledge – which all adds to the mystery of Phar Lap’s demise.
The film is a wonderful ripping yarn and the fact that it’s based on a real story just makes it the greatest racing film of them all.