The Trainer's Daughter; or, A Race for Love is an American silent film directed by James Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter, and produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company.

Jack and Delmar enters into a wager concerning the outcome of a race in which they both have horses competing and the trainer's daughter agrees to marry the winner.

The jockey attempts to intervene, but Delmar and the stable boy overcome him and hide him in a deserted house.

The trainer's daughter convinces Jack to let her take the jockey's place and she wins the race.

[2] The film was loosely based on Theodore Kremer's 1904 play A Race for Life.

[2] It was produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company, and directed by James Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter.

Delmar talks to a stable hand without noticing that Jack's jockey overhears the conversation.

The trainer's daughter exchanges a few words with Jack and runs upstairs.

She shakes hands with Jack and the jockey lying on a stretcher and rushes out towards the racetrack.

After initial endeavours by Edwin Porter which "were too brief to allow developed stories", such as Life of an American Fireman or The Great Train Robbery, this film "moved even closer to the classic melodramatic form, employing the conventional triangle of ingenue, favored beau and jealous villain, and climaxing in a thrilling scene involving the young woman courageousness.

"[4] It is also one of the first examples of what Edward Branigan has termed the "double causal structure": "the couple's romance and the intrigue surrounding the horse race depicted in the film's central section intertwine so as to become interdependent.

[5] The film has also been mentioned as an early example of parallel editing in shots 10 to 12 with "a cut from the characters in a stable preparing for a race to the man blowing a horn to signal the start returning afterwards to the interior of the stable".

[6] This cross-cutting has also been noted as an example of a silent film where an "intradiegetic sound encroachment plays an important role [...].

"[7] The film has also been mentioned as a precursor with respect to cross-cutting used to enhance the suspense of "last-minute rescue narrative": between shots 6 and 10, the film shows the parallel development of the jockey's action on the one hand and Jack and the trainer's daughter on the other.

[8] On the other hand, authors have noted that this film is characteristic of a problem faced by producers of dramatic films circa 1907: ensuring that the story is understood by viewers without "using extradiegetic means during projection to facilitate comprehension of the narrative."

In this case, "the narrative's relative complexity outstrips the representational system employed to mount it.

[...] replicating the methods of the stage – for example, by mounting extended tableaux of gesticulations by actors shot from a considerable distance – could only result in audience incomprehension.

"[2] John L. Fell considers that while the film gives a rather conventional evolution of plot conventions, there is "too little time clearly to explicate the relationships", as a consequence, the film "gives a cloudy picture of actual attitudes shared among father, daughter, boyfriend, jockey, and villain.

An edited version with added intertitles shows that only a few of them are sufficient to make the action understandable.