When people are asked to name their all-time favorite children’s movies, “The Wizard Of Oz” is almost inevitably the movie first named. Also mentioned is any number of the Walt Disney classics or “Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.” These days you might be inclined to include several of the films produced through Pixar including the “Toy Story” movies or “The Incredibles.” One film that is never mentioned and is hardly remembered today is Carroll Ballard’s 1979 film “The Black Stallion,” based on a popular novel by Walter Farley. It is a film of utter beauty and the pure definition of what a family film is all about. It is understandable to even younger children without looking down on them while being very entertaining for adults.
The film is told in four sections with the bare minimum of dialogue. It doesn’t occur to you until much later that the second section on the island is a full 30 minutes without a single word of dialogue spoken.
The film takes place in 1946 and opens on a ship off the coast of North Africa. Among those on board is a young boy named Alec (Kelly Reno) and his father (Hoyt Axton). One day Alec sees a beautiful black stallion and is shooed away by his villainous trainer when he goes in for a closer look. Alec runs to his father who happens to be smack dab in the middle of a high stakes poker game. Alec’s father rubs Alec’s stomach for luck and later that night, when the luck obviously paid off, Alec and his father sift through his bag of winnings which include a gold watch, a diamond and two things dad gives to his son. The first is a pocketknife (which will come in quite handy later) and the second is a small metal knick-knack shaped like a horse. Dad then tells Alec the story of how that horse was tamed and won by Alexander the Great.
Later that night there is a shipwreck (a spectacular scene that still ranks among the best ever filmed) in which Alec falls overboard and is rescued by the stallion. It is clearly evident that everyone else aboard has been killed.
This moves into the second, and best, section of the film that takes place on the island. Alec ends up on shore and has to learn to fend for himself. Soon he comes across the beautiful stallion and sees that his reigns have him tangled amongst the rocks. Alec uses his new knife to free the horse that then gallops off to freedom. The very next scene finds Alec waking in the sand to discover a deadly cobra right in front of him. Before Alec has time to react the stallion comes forth to kill the stallion and make the two even. Alec then uses seaweed to lure the stallion so they can both live off the land and survive. Then, in a beautiful series of scenes, we watch the two grow to befriend one another until Alec is comfortable enough to climb aboard and ride the gallant horse. These sequences are shot with the poetic precision of an award winning ballet as music soars on the soundtrack while we are wowed by the beautiful photography as the two creatures join together to become friends.
After rescuers come the film settles down into its final two, and more familiar sections. Alec returns home to his mother (Teri Garr, who specialized in playing normal mothers back then) while keeping the stallion, now known as ‘Black,” in the backyard despite her consternations. She relents, not surprisingly, because this was the horse that saved her son’s life. After Black escapes the backyard and disappears one day, Alec tracks him to a farm where he is being kept by Henry Dailey (Mickey Rooney in a role that earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination), former jockey and trainer. The trainer will eventually see the true speed that Black has and agrees to train him for a possible race with the two best horses in the racing world. Once again Ballard directs the scenes with as little dialogue as possible, allowing the beautiful cinematography (which was shockingly overlooked for a nomination) to speak volumes along with his talented cast. A terrific sequence involves a late night showing of Black to a man whose identity we are unsure of at the time. We see the man pull up in one of many cars in an entourage. Just as Black is about to run rain starts pouring down. When the man emerges from the car we see his brand new white dress shoes disappear amongst the rain and muddy ground.
Section four is the preparation and actual running of the race. Horse racing scenes have never been especially dramatic on screen but Ballard manages to inject life into this sequence. Actor Kelly Reno was born and raised on a ranch and learned to ride horses at an early age so there are many times we see the horse racing along with Reno’s face visible on top of the horse (remember this was long before CGI).
The general tone of the film is sweet and uplifting. Fans of the novel openly complained at the differences between it and the book, including the ending. Having not read the book I can say that the film is true to itself and its wide array of themes including childhood loss, childhood triumph and childhood freedom. The film lays these themes on gently without an ounce of force as the movie flows over us at a leisurely pace. Despite that children should not be bored in the least. The beauty of the title horse will awe them and the pleasure of seeing man and beast co-exist in a situation when many men (and beasts) simply would give up. The film is almost intoxicating with its sheer beauty. Director Ballard has made a career of making terrific movies with animals co-starring with humans such as “Never Cry Wolf,” “Fly Away Home,” and “Duma.”
The film was a decent hit when it was first released and even spawned a needless, disappointing and less successful sequel in 1983. When you speak of the film today many people claim not to have ever heard of it. Many who have heard of it have never seen the film.
May I suggest that the next time you are putting a movie in for the kids to watch and they’re seeing it for the umpteenth time, go out and find “The Black Stallion.” This is one of those films where an adult will put the movie on and start to watch and suddenly realize that it is two hours later and they have watched the whole thing. It’s that kind of movie and it deserves ranking amongst the greatest kid’s films ever made.
