Lassie Come Home

"Lassie Chien Fidèle" (=Faithful dog,French translation) was one of the first books I read when I was a child .It's a precious memory.

Although it is not,IMHO, Wilcox's most memorable movie (it would rather be his impressive "forbidden planet"),it's still good value and excellent entertainment for the whole family.The color is wonderful .And the real star is Lassie herself for the other characters have less screen time than this extraordinary dog (male colley Pal) and most of them are brilliantly supporting :I particularly like Dame May Witty as the old lady who takes care of Lassie for a short while.

Roddy Mac Dowall was a wunderkind ,my favorite of all the child actors of all time.He is very cute and he is really moving.When I saw the scene he shares with Elizabeth Taylor-very lovely too- in the kennels ,I couldn't help thinking that ,twenty years later ,they would be Octavian and Cleopatra!!!

Like this?try these...

National Velvet (Brown,1944)

The Yearling (Brown,1946)

How green was my valley (Ford,1941,with a younger McDowall)

I'm sure that when MGM was filming Lassie Come Home they were not aware they would be setting up the foundation of a collie franchise. The film obviously was meant to be a B picture filler as none of MGM's big box office names were used. But the story of the loyal collie dog who traveled over 1000 miles from Scotland to Yorkshire to return to his young master struck a nostalgic chord in the English speaking world.

What MGM did do for this film was use location footage, most likely in California and film it in Technicolor. Doing that made the film a classic and wanted by today's market which disdains black and white.

Two young future stars Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor are in this as children and they are an appealing pair. For the rest of the cast MGM made liberal use of the English colony in Hollywood with Elsa Lanchester, Donald Crisp, Nigel Bruce, Edmund Gwenn, Alan Napier, Arthur Shields, and Dame May Witty and her husband Ben Webster. In fact if you take away the two child stars, this film may just have the oldest average age of any film cast around.

Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall formed a lifetime friendship from this film. She also became very attached to Donald Crisp who became a father figure for her until his death in 1974. Crisp and McDowall are reunited as father and son as they were in How Green Was My Valley.

The plot is a simple one. Because he's out of work and needs the money for food on the table, Donald Crisp sells the pure bred collie to Lord Nigel Bruce who takes him from Yorkshire to Scotland. But Lassie ain't having this and escapes and makes the journey to what she considers home. The story is about her adventures on the way.

After over 60 years Lassie is still appealing to children of all ages everywhere.

I sat down tonight to watch this movie, thinking it would be good, warm-hearted fare at the end of a hard day at work. I couldn't watch it. Just. Could. NOT.

I spent the first 15 minutes of the movie crying. I started out teary-eyed for the few brief minutes where Lassie and her boy (played by a roughly 12-yr-old Roddy MacDowell) were together, knowing from the basic plot of the movie (father sells dog to man who lives hundreds of miles away) that the boy and the dog would soon be separated. From there I moved on to full-blown tears when Roddy comes home from school and asks his parents where Lassie is. Anyone who's ever had a dog or ever loved a dog will not be able to take this scene.

We then see where Lassie is living now ... in a kennel, on a rich man's estate who has tons of dogs. Lassie is laying in her kennel all listless because she misses her family. (More tears!) A mean caretaker of the animals tells Lassie, "I'll make you eat even if I have to shove your food down your throat." That did it for me! That was 15 minutes into the movie, I was crying my eyes out, and I said to myself there's no way I can sit through another 75 minutes of this torment of seeing Lassie and her boy separated, of seeing all the terrible ordeals that Lassie must go through before she is reunited with her boy.

I fast-forwarded to the end, thinking the ending would make me happy, and would make up for the 15 minutes of sobbing. Well ... it did and it didn't. I saw the last 2 or so minutes of the film, beginning with a much skinnier Lassie limping on 3 legs to meet Roddy at his school. (How did she get so skinny? What happened to her front paw that made her not be able to walk on it? I don't want to know!) The scene is so touching, so heart-breaking, I don't think anyone could watch it without bursting out sobbing like a baby. Young Roddy did a terrific acting job when he showed his glee and love at seeing his precious Lassie again.

I've read the other comments here, and understand that Lassie went through many trials while traveling back home from Scotland to Yorkshire. I'm glad I fast-forwarded the movie; I don't think I could've taken those scenes! If you ever need a good cry, just watch this movie. I can't recall any other movie I've ever seen that has stirred such emotionality in me, and certainly none that has ever made me cry so hard, both from sadness and happiness and a dozen other emotions.

This review is based on seeing 17 of the 90 minutes of this film. I think if I saw all 90 minutes, I'd be drowning in a pool made from my own tears right now. I don't have enough Kleenex in the house to watch this whole danged movie!

'Lassie Come Home' is the classic first tale of Lassie, and this film is based on the novel by Eric Knight. This story is about the bond between a boy and his dog. Lassie is sold by the boy's father because of hard times, and Lassie makes a long journey to be back at her master's side again. It's a touching and beautiful story for children, and it was my favourite story for a while when I was much, much younger. I have forgotten much of this story now, but I have not forgotten how much I used to watch this film, over and over again on the old VHS. I think that all children should have the opportunity to watch 'Lassie Come Home'.

I'm not going to say much about this movie...because it is, of course, very good...BUT the end is what i want to talk about. I'm a guy so it humbles me a little to make the following comment: It makes you so happy to see that Lassie has overcome the most impossible odds just to meet Joe at school, Ya just start bawling like a lil baby! they will be some of the happiest tears you'll ever cry. 9 out of 10 just because the end makes up for any downfalls the movie might have!(not that it has many)