Mi Taylor was a young wanderer and opportunist whose father had given him all the roads in the Kingdom to travel. One of the roads and a notation in his fathers journal leads him to the quiet English country-side home of the Brown family. The youngest daughter Velvet has a passion for horses and when she wins the spirited steed Pie in a town lottery Mi is encouraged to train the horse for the Grand National - Englands greatest racing event.
Review
If you last saw National Velvet with a Saturday matinée serial for a ticket price of twentyfive cents (including popcorn) and you purchased the video to see it again with family be prepared to reexperience primal feelings from the early dawn of your history. Warm wet tears will run down your cheeks. Warm happy feelings will make you stand up and cheer as if the posse were galloping to the rescue but most of all you will feel good it will happen often while viewing National Velvet. See the video many times cry and use a handkerchief (remember that piece of cloth mom tucked into your shirt pocket) jump up from the sofa and cheer and FEEL GOOD again and again.
National Velvet was initially released in 1944 but I must have seen a rerelease soon thereafter because I know that I was in grade school at the time. I did not see it again until I bought the DVD for my mother recently. And if asked what the movie was about during that interim period of more than fifty years I would have answered "its about a horse." Thats a boys initial and lasting impression.
Animal lovers (Im sorry but) National Velvet is not a horsey movie (and never has been) the film is really about the preteen innocence and enthusiasm of Velvet Brown (Elizabeth Taylor). No animal not the films sorrel gelding nor Charlie my yellow labrador can compete with the budding beauty of Elizabeth Taylor for the cameras attention. But stay focused on Velvets three interwoven relationships with Mi Taylor (Mickey Rooney) with her mother (Anne Revere best supporting actress Academy Award) and the horse Pirate ("Pi"). What characterizes winsome Velvet in these attachments is a 12year olds single mindedness of commitment and trust together with her unwaivering loyalty admirable qualities also of Ms. Taylor in real life. Mi whose father mentored Mrs. Brown is a young itinerant from less fortunate circumstances with a working knowledge of jumping horses. Mrs. Brown ever mindful of her own growing experiences is especially supportive of both her daughter and Mi. The spirited Pi is difficult handling for its owner and the horse soon becomes a project for Mi and Velvet.
Angela Lansbury (Velvets older sister Edwina aka TVs Jessica Fletcher fifty years later) Jackie Jenkins (the young brother) and particularly Donald Crisp (Mr. Brown Velvets father and village butcher) provide able and entertaining support roles. National Velvet received five Academy nominations winning two.
Set in the 1920s English coastal village of Sewels and its green pasturelands (on location in Carmel California) Enid Bagnolds book (1933)and the film (1944) tell us a lot about the moral and social structure of small villages (and our small towns too). One meaningful scene shows Mrs. Brown stowing money in a kitchen pot on her pantry shelf while Mi spies from the window we are wary of what he might do next. Villagers could be suspicious of strangers but they also extended trust believing in a persons goodness. Front doors were left open grandparents will tell of neighbors regularly walking into an empty house through the unlatched screen to borrow a cup of sugar from the same cupboard where family monies were stored (my mother kept petty cash in an unused sugar bowl). Honesty was important but entrusting friends and neighbors was equally valued. That unlatched screen with open front door was a symbol of our neighborliness and trust and a more meaningful symbol of the times we lived in and yes maybe it said something about our innocence too.