Review By: Farouq Abdul-Aziz
“The Black Stallion” might seem to many a just another children movie.But it is only the first impression, reminiscent of another generated on watching Sidney Lumet’s ‘The Wiz’ three weeks ago. Accordingly we tend to classify our interests inside everybody’s family regarding such films. The general interest would slate them as children films.
A quite large portion of cinema and TV audiences across the globe share a common attitude when mixing the children film’s category with the family’s, thus limiting the scope of appreciating such works. These are films which project a message to every member of the family depending on his age and background.
Why the family are classified, mistakenly, as children films? May be it is the relaxing effect they produce, may be it is the clarity of the good and evil conflict, or maybe it is that miraculous simplicity with which the children handle the problems of our adult world.
It is ‘us’ who are used to emotional sophistication. So whenever we come across a relaxing movie with a child hero we’d label it at once as a just another children film.
Tonight’s film is for the whole family. It is for adults too. It renders a fascinating research in human being’s relationship to Nature. His quest for a point of contact as a vehicle to self-understanding.
A serene point of contact is reached here. Man (played here by actor Kelly Reno) enjoys an ultimate experience in a feverish encounter with Nature: The beautiful black Arabic Stallion. A point of contact between two worlds that yielded a unique reunion.
This is the source that generates the relaxing effect: A deep feeling of fulfillment.
The family’s pleasure originates from a primitive wish to delve into the world as seen through children’s eyes. On the one hand we encounter the adult’s tenderness and cruelty. On the other hand Nature’s cruelty and tenderness makes the child’s eye look wider. That is what we see in Kelly Reno’s eyes of wisdom, reminding us of the lines of the great Romantic English poet W. Wordsworth:
The child is the Father of the Man
And I wish my days To be strained with Natural Piety.
The source of enjoyment, it seems to me and to a few other critics, is the script writer’s main concern with the stunning love relationship of the boy and the stallion. In other words the script follows, in extensive details, the development of the human being’s relationship to the animal approaching it from a mythical angle. What we do actually see isn’t merely the chronicle of a love story. The whole context, in reality as well as in appearance, is wrapped with an overwhelming romantic legendary atmosphere. It shows how the child is the Father who has yet to meet another Nature’s Father: The Stallion.
It also exhibits an interpretation of the simple and naive feelings which form the purest meanings of this world.
Another point. The film’s finale provides the audience with satisfaction. The winning makes up for the loss of the boy’s father and the compensation is a reward: The beautiful Arabic
black stallion that makes the winning feasible in the race of life.
The boy, Kelly Reno certainly is more than a natural actor. He is slightly more natural than anything we saw on the screen. Child actors have to be really successful or not to be at all. No half ways, because it is all through depicted on their little faces. Grown-ups, and trained actors, can impose a kind of control on their emotions. Hence directing children actors is a real problem. Sometimes a challenge. Boy Reno had to win a race of ten thousand child candidates for the role.
It’s left to our imagination to see how long did it take to train the beautiful animal in a milieu of cameras, lighting equipment and a technical crew. Filmmaker Carroil Ballard puts it against our expectations: Believe it or not. This beautiful Arab black beast has been very much direct- able than quite a few human actors I have cast in my films.
A third protagonist has to be credited. The filmmaker, of course, is already specified. But I would give a major credit to the award-winner director of photography who has proven that good pictures are a natural product of a painstakingly process of painting with light. Though the script’s basic contribution is deeply felt in delineating the characters, and underlining the relationship, and the director’s in moving every single thing on the scene, yet the cameraman is the artist who bears all the responsibility of visualizing all these elements in front of our eyes. He has the power of seeing things and beings as depicted on the paper. He renders the colour-light interpretation of the characters through a highly sensitive balance. We’ve seen him introducing the stallion in a light that combines the realistic with the legendary atmosphere. To fit in the drama, the stallion sometimes is portrayed in silhouette painted on a clear watery canvas. In other scenes, the beast is rendered to evoke a celestial feeling.
Yet another protagonist should be credited; composer Carmine Coppola (Francis’ Father) who found his motif in oriental music. His main protagonist was the Arabic black stallion.
In a story on show business comebacks, Los Angeles magazine had this to say about Mickey Rooney. With his current Broadway hit, Sugar Babies, and a meaningful role in The Black Stallion, Rooney is one of the most successful comeback stories in years, particularly when you consider how low he had fallen.
Rooney doesn’t argue with that assessment. In fact, he’s the first to admit that he has more comebacks than a Capistrano swallow.
I’ve been broke, sick, not wanted, lonesome, sad and near death about eight times, he told television’s David Sheehan.
A born-again Christian, he attributes his present resurgence to the renewal of his faith.
I went back and gave my life back to Christ, he said, and everything came to fruition. God never abandoned me. I abandoned him.
Whatever happened to his faith, few people believe he ever lost his acting ability. Laurence Olivier and Cary Grant, for example, flatly call him the world’s greatest actor. While some may not be prepared to go that far, almost everyone agrees he belongs somewhere at the top of the list.
His supporting performance in The Black Stallion earned him his fourth Oscar nomination, 41 years after his first nomination (Best performance by an Actor in a leading role, Babes in Arms,) a remarkable achievement in itself. Critics, as critics have been doing throughout his career, raved about his work in the film. Mickey Rooney gives his best screen performance in years, said Fred Yager of the Associated Press while Rex Reed wrote, It’s always a pleasure to watch a great pro like Rooney.
Bom Joe Yule Jr. in Brooklyn to the vaudeville team of Joe Yule and Nell Carter, Rooney began his career at the age of 14 months.
I was standing in back of some scenery while my dad was working on stage, he recalls, and I suddenly sneezed and caused a commotion. My dad showed me off to the audience, and since I had a mouth harp then, I tried to play a little tune. The theater manager loved it and told my dad to keep me in the act.
At the age of three he had his own doll-size tux, and at five was starring in Mickey McGuire” two-reelers at $200 per. Eventually outgrowing the part, he went back into vaudeville billed as Mickey Rooney, and at the age of nine was paged by Hollywood to make Fast Companions.
In the fifty years since that film, much has happened to immortalize the name Rooney. He has garnered scores of honors in both motion pictures and television. In 1938 he was voted an Honorary Juvenile Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy. The following year he was a Best Actor nominee for Babes in Arms, repeated in the same category in 1943 for The Human Comedy, and received a Supporting Actor nomination in 1956 for The Bold and The Brave.
The Andy Hardy series made him a star, and in 1939 and 1940 he was the biggest box office draw, male or female. His many motion pictures include such screen classics as Captains Courageous, Boys Town and National Velvet.
His career started to slip after he left MGM in 1949 and his fortunes have fluctuated ever since. In 1963 he declared bankruptcy, listing assets of $500 and debts of nearly half a million.
Today, at 59, the, much- married (eight times) Rooney is back on top again. It doesn’t surprise him.
I am what most people call a survivor, he says.
