FILM

The Red Pony. Lewis Milestone’s uncommonly sensitive 1949 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s quartet of short stories about a fanciful boy and the ranch hand he idolizes is a “children’s movie” that adults can watch with enormous pleasure. The cast, led by Robert Mitchum, Myrna Loy, and Louis Calhern, is impeccable, Tony Gaudio’s Technicolor cinematography is quietly handsome, and Aaron Copland’s score is one of the major achievements of his middle period. Steinbeck wrote the script himself, proving yet again that his work plays better on screen than it reads on the page (TT).