One good idea for a great Christmas family movie if you’ve never seen it is the 1944 movie in which a young Elizabeth Taylor made her first major breakthrough in Hollywood – “National Velvet”. The movie tells the story of a young horse-mad girl, Velvet Brown, who lives in a village on the south coast of England with her two older sisters (one of whom is played by a young Angela Lansbury) younger brother Donald and her parents.
One day whilst walking, Velvet meets a young man on the road Mi Taylor (played by a young Mickey Rooney). It transpires that Mi was a jockey in a previous life and is on his way to Velvet’s house to meet her mother. Her mother had been the first female to swim the English Channel when she was younger and had been coached by Mi’s father. As they’re talking, they see a horse in a field that has broken free and it jumps a wall. Mi exclaims that the horse has just jumped Becher’s Brook – and when questioned by Velvet, he tells her it’s a fence in the Grand National.
The horse that broke free is then raffled off and Velvet wins it of course. She resolves to run it in the Grand National the following year with Mi’s help and names it “The Pie”. On the day of the race – a Russian jockey is named in all the race guides and on the official hoardings – so no-one on the racecourse realises that Velvet has decided to take the ride herself, having met the Russian jockey the evening before and found him wanting.
Inevitably, she wins the great race but is subsequently disqualified. When it transpires she’s a girl, she becomes a huge celebrity overnight. It’s a great tale of derring-do all shot in glorious Technicolor. It’s also a real tear-jerker in parts, but all comes good in the ed. All in all – it’s the perfect heart-warming movie for the whole family in the run-up to Christmas; it just has that warm, traditional family feel about it.