Mar. 15, 2003 - 8:16 pm

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National Velvet (1944)

another multi-Oscar nominee. i've seen references to this film for many years and i always thought that Elizabeth Taylor was older in it. like at least 16 or 17. nope, she's 12. and she has "braces." well, it's more of a plate that she wears in her mouth, but they call it braces.

it's about a little girl named Velvet who dreams of owning glorious horses and being the best rider in the world. then one day she wins a prize gelding in a raffle and decides that she's going to race him in the Grand National, the biggest race in English horseracing. Mickey Rooney is also in the film and he is a former jockey who comes to work on Velvet's family's farm and eventually starts teaching Velvet the ropes of the Grand National.

Anne Revere was in this film and did an amazing job as always, playing the wise mother. she was also seen recently in The Song of Bernadette (1943) as the mother and will be seen again in another movie i have checked out this evening. that movie also stars Elizabeth Taylor and is one of my favorites. that statement might sound confusing now, but it will hopefully make more sense tomorrow.

anyway, i enjoyed this film much more than i thought i would. it has a lot of positive emotion to it and most of it ends up coming from either Elizabeth Taylor or from Anne Revere. Elizabeth Taylor is very sweet and cute in this movie, as she's supposed to be. and this makes me continue to stick by my guns in saying that she was cool in the 1940s and early 1950s, but she freaked out and went sour in the 1960s. i haven't liked her in much after that point. scary woman sometimes. interesting how people can change so drastically like that.