You think you’ve seen everything, and then you see a silent film narrated by a horse. Following his ostentatious historical epic The Iron Horse (not narrated by a horse, title aside), up-and-coming director John Ford shifted hoofs and made this small-scale, interspecies family saga laid in the pastures of the Bluegrass State. Kentucky Pride follows the life and times of Virginia’s Future, a thoroughbred filly named for the daughter of her first owner, a Southern gentleman (Henry B. Walthall) whose gambling habit continually threatens said future. Following a racetrack accident, Virginia’s Future gets shuffled between a succession of owners: a kindly Irish trainer (Ford regular J. Farrell MacDonald), a farmer, and a cadre of urban junkmen. Offhandedly inventing a sturdy four-legged narrative structure later adopted by Au hasard Balthazar and EO, Kentucky Pride is a sentimental movie with a radically empathetic heart, one that makes a straightforwardly convincing case for equine consciousness and equality. (In the opening credits, “Us Horses” are billed first, including a cameo from real-life champion Man O’ War.) Take it from the horse’s mouth: Ford’s biographer Joseph McBride has championed this film, observing that the “deftness of his craftsmanship in Kentucky Pride — the kind of art that conceals art — keeps this unknown gem fresh and exuberant today.” 

Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from The Film Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts.