The Black Stallion
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Short description
While travelling by ship with his father, young Alec Ramsey becomes fascinated by a wild Arabian stallion kept aboard. When the vessel sinks, boy and horse are the only survivors, stranded together on a deserted island, where they gradually form a bond of trust. After they are rescued, Alec brings the horse home and meets Henry Dailey, a former trainer. The three set out to prepare the stallion for races against the world's fastest thoroughbreds.
Carroll Ballard directed the film, the second feature in his career after The Perils of Priscilla, and later the director of Wind, Fly Away Home and Duma. Walter Murch, Melissa Mathison and William D. Wittliff wrote the screenplay, with Fred Roos and Tom Sternberg producing for United Artists and American Zoetrope. Kelly Reno plays Alec, Mickey Rooney plays Henry Dailey, and Teri Garr appears as Alec's mother, among a credited cast of twenty.
Made for about 3 million dollars, the film took roughly 38 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on its budget. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 7.9 from 31 reviews, while on TMDB viewers give it 7.1 from 341 votes, a smaller but broadly favourable sample. The gap suggests critics responded slightly more warmly than audiences, though both point to a well-regarded family adventure.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to Kelly Reno's recollections, the most difficult scene to film was the shipwreck at night during a storm. A very realistic model of the vessel was used in the scene. The owners of Cass Ole had agreed in advance that the stallion would not be filmed while swimming, fighting, or galloping at full speed, so stunt horses were used in those scenes.
- The stunt horses did not enjoy being in the water, so for the underwater shots of a swimming steed, horses were brought in from the Camargue region in southern France (a marshy area with many salt flats, swamps, and lagoons). According to cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, they had no objections to swimming and were literally transformed in the water.
- As soon as work on the film was completed, United Artists shelved the finished movie for two years. According to the film's director, Carroll Ballard, the movie was only released after the intervention of producer Francis Ford Coppola.
- Filming the scene with the cobra took two days. During filming, a pane of glass separated Kelly Reno from the reptile.
- The scene in which the vessel sinks was filmed in Rome at 'Cinecittà Studios,' which had a pool of the appropriate size. Production designer Aurelio Crugnoia assembled two full-scale sections of the ship (the deck and the stern) directly in the pool, a process that took three months. These were the largest sets ever assembled in this pool. The stern was placed on a platform in the pool and pulled underwater using specially attached cables. Filming this scene took three weeks.
- Sound engineer Alan Splet won an Oscar for this film. Among other things, in the galloping scenes, he attached microphones to the horses' bellies to capture the sound of the animals' breathing and the thundering of hooves.
- In the intense scenes of fighting, racing, and swimming, stunt horses named Junior and Star were used instead of Cass Ole. Star appeared in the scene where the Black Stallion got tangled in a rope and stuck between two boulders. He stood so serenely that the owner had to throw a few stones at him to make the horse look distressed.
- Kelly Reno performed a significant portion of the stunts himself, including the scenes of riding bareback, falling off the horse, and swimming with it. A stunt double was used only in the scene where his character rides a thoroughbred at full gallop because Kelly Reno himself, by his own admission, was too small to hold the horse.
- The steed, named Cass Ole, was taught how to express anger—he would pin his ears back, rear up on his hind legs, and strike the ground with his front hooves. He also learned to express love on the trainer's signal, simulating kisses in scenes with Kelly Reno. Even his facial expression would change. He bolted only once during filming—when the main character, played by Kelly Reno, was galloping along the seashore with his arms raised above his head. Cass Ole suddenly bolted, and the film crew feared for Reno; however, Reno instantly lowered his arms, grabbed the mane, and held on until the horse calmed down and stopped.
- In the scene where the vessel is already sinking and the horse swims toward the main character but suddenly flips over in the water—leaving its head submerged and its hooves in the air—everything happened by accident. When the stunt horse's head reappeared above the water, an involuntary sigh of relief escaped from everyone on the film crew. The filmmakers were particularly proud of the fact that no horses were harmed during filming.
- The film was shot, in part, in Sardinia. It was quite chilly during filming, and Kelly Reno, who was practically naked, was shivering.
- The steed's mane had been trimmed. For the filming, the mane had to be 'extended' to make it look like that of a wild horse. Additionally, he had white spots on his legs and forehead, which had to be painted black.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
