The Red Pony (1949)

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Siskoid
I don't like to see animals suffer, even if it's fake, so The Red Pony wouldn't have been on my list except for Myrna Loy. And Steinbeck, adapting his own novella? You just know it's not going to end well and the pony is going to go the way of Lenny's rabbits. Things that work in literature don't always work on film, and in this case, the bleak outlook has everyone being sad to the point of dullness. Myrna Loy is particularly impacted, often relegated to exhausted reaction shots as she sees her family suffer, largely from the weight of what others think of them. That's really the theme of this adaptation of the novella's first of four chapters (with a bit of the others mixed in, and changing one plot point to wring a happy ending out of it), but the "family picture" structure, the sequences where the boy's imagination takes over the imagery (forgotten by the end of the first act) and music - the much-ballyhooed score is way too happy-Disney-life-on-the-farm to fit what eventually happens - doesn't really bring it out. It's like the director/studio had Steinbeck, but didn't want to do Steinbeck. Although depending on your opinion of American Lit, you may think it appropriate that the movie is generally boring. 1 year 8 months ago