Friday, June 3, 2011
Film National Velvet: Elizabeth Taylor Retro Launches at Belcourt
Posted by Jim Ridley on Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 3:11 PM
It’s there in the charge that Anne Revere’s Mrs. Brown gives her indomitable 12-year-old daughter Velvet, who intends to ride her undisciplined horse to glory in England’s Grand National Sweepstakes. “Everyone should have a chance at a breathtaking piece of folly once in his life,” she says, recalling how she let go of her own hope to swim the English Channel. I wonder how many mothers, including my own, thought of their deferred dreams in this moment while hoping their children (especially daughters) would take the hint to chase their own.
Directed by Knoxville hometown hero Clarence Brown, National Velvet is the high-gloss fruit of the MGM studio system: loaded with wonderful contract players (starting with Mickey Rooney as Velvet’s jockey cohort), shot in sumptuous Technicolor. But its enduring force of fulfilled fantasy rests with the young actress playing Velvet — an adolescent Elizabeth Taylor, who would rarely if ever again look so free and unencumbered by the baggage of her own beauty.
Expect to see lots of parents — including, quite possibly, this one — clutching their children’s hands and Kleenexes when The Belcourt launches its summer-long salute to the late Taylor with this 1944 gem. It screens Saturday and Sunday, followed next week by George Stevens' 1951 A Place in the Sun.
Comments (0)