The Best Adventure Movies: The Black Stallion

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Outside Magazine, June 2005

Outside Goes to the Movies
A Perfect 10
The Black Stallion

By Steven Kotler & The Editors

9. The Black Stallion (1979)
Director Carroll Ballard has made a career out of examining relationships between humans and animals, but this, his first feature, is still his best. Adapted from Walter Farley's classic 1941 children's book, the movie starts as a twist on the classic Crusoe tale: 11-year-old Alec Ramsey (Kelly Reno), shipwrecked on a deserted island off North Africa, earns the friendship of a wild stallion. Shot on a beach in Sardinia, with no dialogue for some 25 minutes, Reno's patient courting of "the Black" works just as well on us—we're lured back into that imaginary world we occupied as children, and we don't want to leave.

Fortunately, the initial riding sequences, in which the Black and Ramsey charge through the surf, set us up for the Seabiscuit-esque fairy tale that follows, once they return to the United States. Mickey Rooney earned a supporting-actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of veteran horse trainer Henry Dailey, but it's the elegantly crafted images of a boy playing with a horse that stick with you—and have you reveling in a mythic space hours after the story ends.

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