Black Beauty (1971)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Theatrical Trailer Trailer-The Bear, Treasure Island, The Call Of The Wild Trailer-The Wind In The Willows
Rating
Year Of Production	1971
Running Time	101:21 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	James Hill
Studio Distributor	Tigon British Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Mark Lester Walter Slezak Peter Lee Lawrence Uschi Glas Patrick Mower John Nettleton Maria Rohm Eddie Golden Clive Geraghty John Hoey Patrick Gardiner Brian McGrath Ronan Smith
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	Lionel Bart John Cameron

    Black Beauty is a famous children's tale written by Anna Sewell in the 19th century. It was the only novel she wrote and was originally intended more as a morality tale to encourage people to treat animals better rather than a children's story. It has been adapted many times for film and television and this particular version was made for the cinema in 1971. It was filmed in Ireland and Spain but is an English production.

    The story presented here bears some relation to the original novel, although many of the adventures which Black Beauty gets involved in are not from the novel. The story is essentially the biography of a horse, Black Beauty, and it follows his story through good times and very difficult times. He is born on a farm in England owned by a Mr Evans. He gives the horse to his son Joe (Mark Lester who you may recognise from Oliver! )  when it is born and he quickly grows to love the horse. Unfortunately, this idyllic life cannot last for Black Beauty. The new squire, Sam Greene (Patrick Mower), takes over the farm as he is owed money and Black Beauty is included in the settlement. From there possession of the horse passes through a gypsy, a horse trader, a European circus, an English gentleman, a soldier, a farmer and to a coal yard. Finally, he is reunited with Joe and lives out his life in peace.

    This is not a terrible children's film but it does have a made-for-television feel about it even though it wasn't. The acting is generally pretty bad with overacting being the order of the day. Some scenes are obviously day for night with quick changes of darkness levels being obvious between edits. The biggest problem, though, which I have with this film considering its target audience is the level of violence (including a horse execution) and the very gynaecological birth of Black Beauty, which will certainly encourage some questions from the little ones. Not surprisingly this film has been rated PG by the OFLC. The score of this film is very dated and quite annoying. If you were not looking at the screen you might think you were watching The Love Boat.

    Annoyingly the disc did not display time coding or chapters during playback.

    I can't really recommend this film for modern children, however it may be of interest to some for the nostalgia value.

Video

    The video quality is reasonable but not in the correct aspect ratio.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which is NOT the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. I will remove one star from the overall rating due to the incorrect aspect ratio.

    The picture was surprisingly clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise. Shadow detail was OK but no more. There was light grain throughout.

    The colour was quite good but a little variable and included some light colour bleeding.

    Artefacts were plentiful including major splodges during the credits and a few smaller one during the rest of the running time, some mild aliasing and jagged edges, reel change markers every 20 minutes or so and some tape tracking errors.

    There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is average.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was fairly clear most of the time but some dialogue was a little muffled. There were also some obvious sync issues probably as a result of poor ADR work rather than an issue with the transfer.

    The score of this film by Lionel Bart is very dated, overbearing and annoying. There was some distortion, especially during the credits.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu included the ability to select scenes but very little else.

Theatrical Trailer

    Unlike the feature the trailer is in the correct aspect ratio, although not 16x9 enhanced.

Umbrella Propaganda

    Trailers are included for The Bear, Treasure Island, Call of the Wild & Wind in the Willows.

    The Region 1 release of this film has no extras but is in anamorphic widescreen so is preferred to our local release. The Region 2 version is the same as ours except that a photo gallery is included. Region 1 is the go.

    The video quality is reasonable.

    The audio quality is average.

    Only a theatrical trailer is included in the extras department.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall