Black Beauty

This is to me the best version of the movie. Most complain because it's in b/w, but that makes it even better. A lot of people don't realize that this was the debut of Fury, the horse from the 50's TV show by the same name. Never a smarter horse was there.

Black Beauty (1946, 20th Century Fox) I saw this version years ago and today, I finally saw it again on TCM. The cast is outstanding and the production values are nice, but at the times, the editing is just abruptly cut and I have a feeling that this film was meant to be longer. The length of the film and the editing make it just short of being a true classic. If it was filmed in technicolor, it would have really brought out the beauty of this story. The performances are great as well.

There's only superficial resemblances to Anna Sewell's classic in this 1946 movie but this is a not bad piece of Hollywood hokum. Mona Freeman is a pretty and lively heroine as she cavorts on horseback across a Hollywood version of the English countryside and falls in love with handsome American Richard Denning.Very pleasant musical background by Dimitri Tiomkin.

Widower Squire Weldon (Charles Evans). trying to raise his motherless daughter, Anne (Mona Freeman) presents her with a colt, Black Beauty (Highland Dale), in the hope that by disciplining the horse, she may learn to discipline herself.

Seeing as this was released in the 1940s, I am going to assume the film was black and white and color was added later. This may not be correct, as some great color was around early on. But either way, the use of it here is very nice and makes the dresses (for example) very vibrant. This is how color of its time ought to be used.

The story itself is alright and tends to be a children's story, though it may have a wider family appeal. There is the element of romance, and of course the theme that a horse is more than just something to ride.

The title of this movie is misleading. It leads us to assume that we are going to see a film version of the classic novel by Anna Sewell. Not quite. The book and the movie have about two things in common. They both concern a horse and the horse's name in both the book and the movie is Black Beauty. But the similarities end there. This film focuses primarily on a sensually blossoming teenage girl(the impossibly perky Mona Freeman) who takes a romantic interest in the handsome young American(Richard Denning) who visits her father's farm in the English countryside. The pic then mostly concerns the problems the young girl has when she tries to get the man to notice her. Oh yes, our heroine just happens to have a black colt that she just happens to have named Black Beauty, but said horse doesn't figure too much in this version of the story. Don't get me wrong, there are some charming moments. Miss Freeman is an appealing heroine, and Dimitri Tiomkin's lively score helps immensely. The film was originally shot in black and white, but is most commonly available in a computer colorized version. This is one instance in which the colorization process does help because the striking cinematography is much easier to appreciate that way, and is the film's strongest asset.