Film · MGM · 1944
Pass it on
National Velvet
60Watch it awake.
A butcher's girl rides a race girls were barred from, and the want is everything.
The review
The horse is what a child remembers. The rule is what I remembered. A butcher's daughter, family not rich, trains for the Grand National and rides disguised as a boy because girls may not. Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney. A child can watch it. I would watch it with one, and I would not pretend the disguise is just a bit of dress-up.
The want is the race. The rule she breaks is a rule about girls, not a rule about hurting a neighbor. That matters, and it is still a false name at the start. Don't tell a child the barrier was nothing. Tell them who it kept out, and who had to hide to reach the race.
Journal
Keep National Velvet in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 60. Yours can differ.
The glance
Temperance is the thin one.
Is appetite shown and then put down, or are you being trained to want the next one?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
Shabaash Mithu
66 instead of 60
Shabaash Mithu is still a sport film, and it scores 66 instead of 60. What you gain is temperance: Earnest, not lurid.
The eight
- 7Industry
A butcher's house and the daily training of a horse are the real work.
- 8Household
A family that is not rich backs a daughter, and she is the life of it.
- 5Piety
She knows girls may not ride, and conscience does not make her obey that.
- 8Courage
She risks the National and being found out, backed by a family that is not rich.
- 6Republic
The race has a law about girls, and she answers it by riding anyway.
- 3Temperance
The want is the race, and nothing in the story asks her to put it down.
- 5Truth
The disguise is a lie a bad rule forces, and she still enters under a boy's name.
- 6Stewardship
A thin family spends what it has so one girl can reach a race.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
Live Historic · National Velvet · 60IMDb
