Widower Squire Weldon (Charles Evans). trying to raise his motherless daughter, Anne (Mona Freeman) presents her with a colt, Black Beauty (Highland Dale), in the hope that by disciplining the horse, she may learn to discipline herself.Seeing as this was released in the 1940s, I am going to assume the film was black and white and color was added later. This may not be correct, as some great color was around early on. But either way, the use of it here is very nice and makes the dresses (for example) very vibrant. This is how color of its time ought to be used.The story itself is alright and tends to be a children's story, though it may have a wider family appeal. There is the element of romance, and of course the theme that a horse is more than just something to ride.

Perhaps the best way to tell the story of Black Beauty is with animation. This version of the Anna Sewall family classic that stars Mona Freeman and Richard Denning is a nice film, but not the story. Too many years ago that I care to remember I read the book as a kid and the story is told from the horse's point of view. I do remember the whole first part of the novel with the birth of Black Beauty and how he interrelated with the other horses on the estate of widower Charles Evans and his daughter Mona Freeman.Circumstance separates the horse from his mistress and the novel tells of the horse's odyssey. A lot of that is rushed through until the reunion. The book is about the horse's experience with the various humans who owned him, some good and some bad.Mona Freeman does a nice job of the spirited young lady, a lot like Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet who lives for her horse. Freeman is a little older than Taylor's character and she wants handsome young American Richard Denning to notice her. Denning at first has eyes for the sophisticated Evelyn Ankers who was taking a break from those Universal horror flicks. In real life she was Mrs. Richard Denning at the time.Best role in the film for me was J.M. Kerrigan as the very wise groom John on the Evans estate. Next to Black Beauty be's the smartest one in the film.This version of Black Beauty is a nice family film, done a bit on the cheap by 20th Century Fox's B film unit.

This is to me the best version of the movie. Most complain because it's in b/w, but that makes it even better. A lot of people don't realize that this was the debut of Fury, the horse from the 50's TV show by the same name. Never a smarter horse was there.

The title of this movie is misleading. It leads us to assume that we are going to see a film version of the classic novel by Anna Sewell. Not quite. The book and the movie have about two things in common. They both concern a horse and the horse's name in both the book and the movie is Black Beauty. But the similarities end there. This film focuses primarily on a sensually blossoming teenage girl(the impossibly perky Mona Freeman) who takes a romantic interest in the handsome young American(Richard Denning) who visits her father's farm in the English countryside. The pic then mostly concerns the problems the young girl has when she tries to get the man to notice her. Oh yes, our heroine just happens to have a black colt that she just happens to have named Black Beauty, but said horse doesn't figure too much in this version of the story. Don't get me wrong, there are some charming moments. Miss Freeman is an appealing heroine, and Dimitri Tiomkin's lively score helps immensely. The film was originally shot in black and white, but is most commonly available in a computer colorized version. This is one instance in which the colorization process does help because the striking cinematography is much easier to appreciate that way, and is the film's strongest asset.