Minuzzolo

Sensitive and enjoyable film about a ranch boy who is gifted with a colt . The young Northern California boy cares his colt , enjoys , plays, until the little horse escapes , then things go wrong.

A family film with emotion , sensibility and good feeling . It manages to accomplish attractive scenes , though slow-moving and dull , at times . Actors are frankly suberb such as Robert Mitchum, Myrna Loy , Shepperd Strudwick , Margaret Hamilton as an angry teacher , the small boy Peter Miles , and special mention for Louis Calhern as the grandfather usually telling stories. It was remade for TV in 1976 directed by Robert Totten with Henry Fonda , Maureen O'Hara , Ben Johnson, Jack Elam.

It contains a really classy musical score by the great composer Aaron Copland . As well as colorful and brilliant cinematography by excellent cameraman Tony Gaudio, in perfect remastering. The motion picture was competenly directed by Lewis Milestone . This one was a vintage filmmaker who shot a lot of films in all kinds of genres with penchant for warlike genre , getting some masterpieces . As Lewis Milestone directed the following ones : " Mutiny on the Bounty" , "Oceans' 11", "Pork Chop Hill" , "Halls of Moctezuma" , "Arch of Triumph" , "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" , "Of Mice and Men" , "The General died at Dawn", "The Front Page" , "All Quiet on the The Western Front" , "The Garden of Eden" .

Like John Garfield, Robert Mitchum is yet another one of my very favourite actors from that particular, by-gone era of moviedom history.

If you ask me, Mitchum was such an easy-to-like actor. Without any apparent pretentiousness, he casually projected just the right kind of masculinity (on-screen) which unanimously appealed to both men and women, alike.

So, with keeping that in mind - Is it any wonder that I found the best scenes in The Red Pony to clearly be the ones where Mitchum played a direct part in the action? I mean, without this dude's presence I probably wouldn't have enjoyed this film to the degree that I did and I most likely would've rated it somewhat lower, as well.

For the most part - I'd say that The Red Pony (which was beautifully filmed in lush Technicolor) was a film that would be best enjoyed by children. There really wasn't much of a tale in this sentimental, Hollywood Western to hold the rapt attention of an adult.

There is an unusual abundance of talent associated with this film. The screenplay was written by one of the great American writers of the 20th century, John Steinbeck, taken from his excellent short novel of the same name. The score was written by Aaron Copland, perhaps the most noted composer in American history. The director, Lewis Milestone, made many fine pictures over a long career including Academy Award winner 'All Quiet on the Western Front.'

All that talent doesn't necessarily mean that 'The Red Pony' is going to be the greatest movie of all time, though it is a good one. Milestone's direction and Copland's score are both fine, but I didn't feel like Steinbeck's script was nearly as good as his book.

We often complain when a favorite work of literature is changed considerably by the movies, but what do you say when it's a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author doing it to his own work? Although I don't think this filmed version lives up to the novel, it still covers the same ground. It's about a boy growing up on a farm in Steinbeck's beloved Salinas Valley in California, where he learns some lessons about life. One of them is that the things you think you want the most sometimes come at a much higher price than you were prepared to pay. My favorite actor in this movie was Myrna Loy as the mother. Where did I ever get the idea that she wasn't supposed to be that good an actress? I must have had her mixed up with someone else.

It is hard for me to believe this is a John Steinbeck novel and screen play, it is the complete opposite of anything that Steinbeck has ever written. Myrna Loy, (Alice Tiffin) plays a rather quite woman who lived in the Salinas Valley all her life and is a very calm mother with her son Tom and her aging father who repeats stories over and over again until I even got tired of hearing the grandfather, (Louis Calhern) repeat his lines over and over again. Alice Tiffin's husband came from San Jose, California and is beginning to drift away from the ranch and wants to work with his brother who lives in San Jose. Robert Mitchum, (Billy Buck) plays an outstanding role and seems to be the only person who puts his heart and soul into this picture. Louis Calhern gave a great supporting role and I just think that Myrna Loy did not belong in this film.

"The Red Pony" tells the story of a ranching family living near Salinas, California and the obsessive love of a boy for his pony. Within that story, certain dramas are being played out; a man unsure of himself and his ability, feeling a stranger in the place he lives, even within his own family; his wife, struggling to keep the family homestead going, unsure of her man's determination and grit; an old man whose time has passed him by, struggling to cope in a world he no longer fully comprehends; a boy coming of age, having to deal with nature's cruel injustice as well as the knowledge that adults are not infallible but also make mistakes.

Robert Mitchum is outstanding in the role of the ranch hand, Billy Buck, who seems to know everything there is to know about horses, thus earning the adoration of Tom, the ranch owner's son. Equally impressive is grandfather Louis Calhern, a former wagon train boss no longer needed for such kind of work. He is reduced to recycling stories that no one wishes to hear any longer. Myrna Loy, on the other hand, seems a bit too casual and matter of fact to be the challenged wife of an unsteady partner in the ranching business. She is much better suited to romantic comedy, playing such roles as Nora, the madcap wife in "The Thin Man" series. Peter Miles, who plays Tom, is satisfactory, but not as charismatic as some other child actors of the period.

The gifted American composer, Aaron Copland, does the music score, teaming successfully with the great American story teller, John Steinbeck, who wrote the screenplay based on his novel. "The Red Pony" may not be the best adaptation of Steinbeck to appear on the silver screen, on the order of "The Grapes of Wrath" or "East of Eden", but it is certainly worth watching, especially for the performances of Mitchum and Calhern, as well as for the music of Copland.