Wick's Review

Summary - Great 4.0

Elemental kid’s movie, just 40 minutes long, thy name is White Mane. It’s from France of all places, with French cowboys. Really. And wild French horses – white horses and white stallions.

White Mane, the leader of a herd of wild Camargues, “was a proud and fearsome horse. All the other horses obeyed him. He didn’t like men, but when he had to he could stand up to them,” the Narrator informs us.

Thus White Mane is a French horse opera extraordinaire, albeit a child’s fable of improvident intentions and extreme manipulation. It’s so manipulative, so super-sweet, so French, no wonder the Disney Company knew French Disneyland would work. Treacle is OK in a children’s fable however, especially one that so consummately creates a dream life, most especially a childhood-edition dream life.

This fable, beloved by kids and parents for more than half a century now, concludes tragically albeit romantically. Parents beware the lack of happy ending. Otherwise, beware your child asking you to play White Mane again and again and again. Why not. Crin-Blanc, its French name, is rousing entertainment.

Acting - Very Good 3.5

Alain Emery played the boy fisherman, a man about the marsh who befriends and tames White Mane. My Little Man!!

Let’s also not forget the Camargue stallion who played White Mane, as beautiful a beast as you ever saw.

Also notable is three year-old Pascal Lamorisse, the writer-director’s son who would star as a six year-old in his next short – The Red Balloon.

Frank Silvera delivers the crisp English narration.

Film - Great 4.0

White Mane was “filmed on location in the marshes of Camargue, France and won numerous awards on its release, including the Short Film Palme d’Or Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival,” informs Wikipedia.

Made by Albert Lamorisse as one of several award-winning shorts he made in the Fifties, White Mane should be called White Stallion, even though White Mane wasn’t the only white stallion in the film.

Lamorisse’s film alternates between tonalities: languid, chirpy and rousing. While too manipulative for adult sensibilities, it clearly works for the kid in all of us.

Edge - Tame 1.4

The fighting between two white stallions gets uncomfortable after while. Good thing they don’t make movies the way they used to. The fierce horse fight is spectacular however.

Reality - Glib 1.6

The story is based on real horses that are found in the Camargue region in southeast France. For centuries, possibly thousands of years, these small horses have lived wild in the harsh environment of the wetlands of the Rhône delta, the Camargue marshes, developing the stamina, hardiness and agility for which they are known today. They are the traditional mount of the gardians — Camargue “cowboys.”

Camargue horses galloping through water, as does Crin Blanc in the film, are a popular and romantic image of the region.

So says Wikipedia.

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