Better known as Black Beauty, Anna Sewell's 1877 novel Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse is one of the biggest-selling books published in the last 150 years, and has given rise to a whole sub-genre of stories about people and their beloved horses. It's also been adapted into a stage play, a mini-series and a 1970s TV show titled The Adventures of Black Beauty, along with no less than eight different movies that date back to the silent film era.
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So, with the recent release of Disney+'sBlack Beauty, let's rankevery movie adaptation of Black Beauty. Since many of these films are too old to have a critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, these rankings are based on their average IMDb user rating on a scale of 1-10.
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8) Your Obedient Servant (1917) - Average Score N/A
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1917's Your Obedient Servant is a silent black and white movie and the first screen adaptation of Black Beauty. Directed by D.W. Griffith, the film chronicles the trials and tribulations of the titular horse after their master, a Confederate soldier, is shot and presumed dead. As with Griffith's other work, most notoriously The Birth of a Nation, Your Obedient Servant paints a sympathetic portrait of Southerners who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and vilifies the Northerners whom Black Beauty encounters on his journey before he's reunited with his original owner. The movie does not have an IMDb user rating.
7) Black Beauty (1971) - Average Score 5.5
1971's Black Beauty begins in England in the 1850s and follows Black Beauty as he's passed from one person to another after his original owner, Joe Evans (Mark Lester), is forced to sell him due to his family's financial woes. In a meta twist, this adaptation ends with Beauty and Joe being reunited in the 1870s thanks to Joe's employer, a fictionalized version of Sewell. The film was directed by James Hill and praised by critic Roger Ebert for being "faithful to the moral indignation of Anna Sewell," even with its changes to the book's plot. IMDb users have given this version an average rating of 5.5.
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6) Black Beauty (1946) - Average Score 5.8
The 1946 movie adaptation of Black Beauty begins in 1880s England.A young Beauty is born and gifted as a birthday present to a girl named Anne (Mona Freeman), who develops a close relationship with them over the years that follow. This version of the story focuses heavily on the romance between Anne and a traveling American man named Bill Dixon (Richard Denning), but also explores Anne's journey into adulthood and maintains the sympathy for working animals from Sewell's book. Directed by Max Nosseck, the film has a user rating of 5.8 among IMDb users.
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5) Black Beauty (1921) - Average Score 5.9
1921's Black Beauty is a silent film that focuses less on the titular horse and more on the people around them, like would-be lovers Jessie Gordon (Jean Paige) and Harry Blomefield (James Morrison), and a scheming villain named Jack Beckett (George Webb). The movie was directed by David Smith and was one of two adaptations of Black Beauty that came out in 1921, along with a re-edited and expanded version of Your Obedient Servant that was also titled Black Beauty. Smith's version of Black Beauty hasan average IMDb user rating of 5.9.
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4) Black Beauty (2020) - Average Score 6.2
The 2020 movie version of Black Beauty revolves around the friendship between an orphaned young girl named Jo Green (Mackenzie Foy) and a mustang she dubs Black Beauty, or Beauty for short. Unlike Sewell's novel, Black Beauty is female in the film, with Kate Winslet providing her "voice" and narrating the story from her point of view. Written and directed by Ashley Avis, the movie has earned mixed reviews from critics, with Robert Daniels writing in the NYT that "Avis loses the novel’s sincerity by watering down Sewell’s animal welfare plea." Black Beauty skipped theaters to release directly to Disney+ and has an IMDb user rating of 6.2 after 428 votes.
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3) Black Beauty (1978) - Average Score 6.4
1978's Black Beauty is an animated made-for-TV movie that was directed by Daniel Haller and produced by the iconic American animation duo Joseph Barbara and William Hanna. Story-wise, the film is relatively faithful to Sewell's book and follows the titular horse as he endures various hardships and learns valuable lessons while being passed from one human owner to another over the course of his life. The titular horse is voiced by Alan Young, who famously played Wilbur on the talking horse sitcom Mister Ed and voiced Disney's Scrooge McDuck up until his death in 2016. The film has an IMDb user rating of 6.4.
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2) Black Beauty (1987) - Average Score 6.5
The 1987 film adaptation of Black Beauty is another animated made-for-TV movie, albeit one that was produced by Burbank Films Australia. In this version of the story, Black Beauty is a stallion who leads a happy life working as a country carriage horse for his owners, including the wealthy Squire Douglas Gordon and his children, Bertie and Polly. The film's uncredited director, David Cherkasskiy, spent much of his career making movies for the Soviet Union, which mayexplain why this version of Black Beauty plays down the concerns about worker exploitation from Sewell's book. 1987's Black Beauty has an average user rating of 6.5 on IMDb.
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1) Black Beauty (1994) - Average Score 6.6
1994's Black Beauty is one of the most faithful movie adaptations of Sewell's novel and follows the titular horse ("voiced" by Alan Cumming) as he encounters many people over the course of his life, including a kindly stable worker named Joe Green (who's played by Andrew Knott and Ian Kelsey at different ages). The film was written and directed by Caroline Thompson and received generally positive reviews, with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ranking it among the top ten movies of the year. It fared poorly at the box office, but performed better on the home market and has continued to grow in popularity over the years. The movie has an IMDb user rating of 6.6.
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