Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

During the Depression, Sonora Webster runs away from home and joins a travelling show. Her job is to ride a horse off a high ramp into a tank of water. During one performance she hits the water wrong and loses her sight. She keeps diving without it. Steve Miner directed for Disney. Gabrielle Anwar plays Sonora, Cliff Robertson the show's owner, Doctor Carver. The story is real. Sonora Webster Carver performed diving-horse acts on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City; she went blind in 1931 after her retinas detached and continued the act for another eleven years. What is hard for a modern audience is the act itself: the horse jumps too, and such shows were later ended entirely on animal welfare grounds. The narrative stays faithful to the Disney template, moving through disability, family and determination in the expected order. Anwar's performance and the fact that the dives were shot with real horses hold it up. Who it is for: viewers who like family films drawn from real lives. Who it is not for: anyone who does not want to watch animals used for spectacle.