Cinema 1944: The New Pictures: NATIONAL VELVET

National Velvet (M.G.M.). Throughout her childhood, horses so deeply excited Velvet Brown (Elizabeth Taylor) that merely to look at them was ecstasy. She lost her heart to one at twelve, when she first saw a neighbor’s fierce new gelding running majestically through a meadow. Without quite realizing it, she also lost her heart to her companion that memorable day, a hard little tramp of 17 (Mickey Rooney), He stayed on in the village to work in her father’s butcher shop.

National Velvet is not merely sure to delight children and the child in most adults; it is also an interesting psychological study of hysterical obsession, conversion mania, preadolescent sexuality. Twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, a beautiful little girl who has hitherto had minor roles in Lassie Come Home, Jane Eyre, etc., is probably the only person in Hollywood who could bring to this curious role its unusual combination of earthiness and ecstasy.