White Mane
(aka CRIN-BLANC, WILD STALLION)
With: Alain Emery, Pascal Lamorisse (Falco), Laurent Roche
Narrator: Frank Silvera
English-Language version:
Plot Outline (IMDb): A boy comes across a white-haired wild horse in the Camargue. Ranchers seek to capture the horse, but it escapes. What will happen as the boy sets out to find the horse again? The film is set in the gorgeous landscape of the Camargue, a marsh area in the south of France where the river Rhone meets the Mediterranean Sea.
Plot Outline: In the marshes of France, a herd of beautiful wild horses roam free. Their leader is a handsome stallion called White Mane. A family lives nearby, and a young boy called Falco becomes White Mane's friend. A group of rustlers try to capture White Mane, first by chasing him and then by burning him out of his home, but Falco and White Mane are able to escape the bad men and run off to paradise together.
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Crisp black and white cinematography and a poetic music score punctuate this absolutely breathtaking wildlife adventure from the makers of THE RED BALLOON and CIRCUS ANGEL.
This film shares some significant similarities to Joseph Krumgold's AND NOW MIGUEL (itself a variation on 1938 boy-and-animal meditation THE ADVENTURES OF CHICO), and even K. Gordon Murray's LITTLE BOY BLUE AND PANCHO.
In each, a sensitive young boy, living in primitive isolation in the midst of the wilderness, makes nature his obsession, his muse, and eventually his salvation. In each work, there is a violent rites-of-passage sequence (here an apocalyptic fire), and in each, the boy graduates through his struggle to a paradise where animals and humans live together in harmony.
In WHITE MANE, Falco is dragged by Whitey through a river, "to a wonderful island where animals and children can live together forever". In filmmaker Larorisse's other masterpiece, THE RED BALLOON, the boy's muse, a gaggle of balloons, carries him literally off to heaven. One can easily see this as a somewhat sobering Death metaphor, escaping the evil world of sin (the flesh) to a perfect world of eternal rapport (the spirit).
In addition to winning lots of film festival awards (and ending up in many school film libraries), WHITE MANE played the U.S. Kiddie Matinee circuit twice, once in 1954, and again in 1966 on the bottom of a Childhood Productions double bill with Gene Deitch's delightful ALICE OF WONDERLAND IN PARIS.
Video/DVD availability:VHS (Embassy Home Video, oop; Janus Films), DVD (???)
Story: Denys Colomb de Daunant
Screenplay: Albert Lamorisse
Music: Maurice LeRoux
Cinematography: Edmond Sechan
Produced by: Albert Lamorisse
Directed by: Albert Lamorisse
Released in the U.S. in 1954 by William Synder / United Artists
Released in the U.S. (non-theatrical) by Janus Films (40 minutes)
Re-released in the U.S. in 1967 by Childhood Productions (40 minutes)
Commentary: Saul J. Turell
Narrated by Les Marshak
