other horse movies

Black Beauty (obviously)

The Man From Snowy River

Pharlap

Seabiscuit

Wow, thanks for your link to this great list, and on a site in which many of the films listed are for sale.

We should add Brady's Escape. It might not be primarily about a horse, but horses play a large enough part in the story to demand the unique talents of Kelly Reno, only a year or two older than in The Black Stallion. Kelly lives on a ranch during World War II as the Hungarian equivalent of a cowboy. The ranchers find a downed American pilot, hide him from the occupying Germans, and eventually arrange for him to escape to safety over the border. Kelly forges such a close bond with the pilot that he plans to go with him and emigrate to America. As in Black Stallion, his acting is understated and stoic, but nonetheless moving.

The list on this site also interests me in view of the hypothesis of an octogenarian friend. He recalls from his childhood in Virginia that many boys his age were as "crazy about horses" as the next generation would be about hot-rod cars. Those who had access to a horse prided themselves on their riding abilities, while the 'have-nots' were envious and dreamed of joining the 'haves.' He notes that The Black Stallion (one of his favorite films), although made in the 1970s, had to be set shortly after World War II because soon thereafter, horsemanship ceased to be a popular sport among boys. Why the change? He believes that the appearance of National Velvet in 1944 was so influential in promoting the sport to girls, that boys began to lose interest in it as vaguely unmanly, just as they have done with other occupations or pastimes in the face of "equal opportunity." Female riders now dominate horse shows in the eastern U.S.

This is his theory. I have seen, however, that boys are still very well represented in rodeos in the West. From the site you have linked we can see, too, that The Black Stallion is not the only movie dating from the 70s-90s about a boy and a horse. Has my old friend overdrawn the picture?

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The Black Stallion Returns(1983)
The Champ(1979)
The Horse Whisperer(1998)
Racing Stripes(2005)
Sylvester(1985)
Sea Biscuit(2003)
The Electric Horseman(1979)
Dreamer(2005)
Black Beauty(1994)
National Velvet(1944)
Lightning: The White Stallion(1986)
Wild Hearts Can't be Broken(1991)
Danny(1977)
Dark Horse(1992)







"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading". -Henny Youngmam

Oh, I just thought of that horse in The Big Country, that bucks Gregory Peck off a few times...