Folco jumps on White Mane (for the first time) and rides him bareback across the marshes of Camargue, over the sparse dunes to the sea.
The film ends as the narrator states that White Mane took Folco "to a wonderful place where men and horses live as friends, always.
For centuries, possibly thousands of years, these small horses have lived wild in the harsh environment of the wetlands of the Rhône delta, the Camargue marshes, developing the stamina, hardiness and agility for which they are known today.
In White Mane, Rafferty wrote, "you sense, as in few other films, the real terrors of nature... And Lamorisse, [the] movie show[s], really was a remarkable artist: one of the cinema's best poets and a fearless explorer of the scary and exhilarating outbacks of the imagination.
"[2] Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post liked the mise en scène, writing "there are perfectly worthy reasons to keep [the film] in circulation.
The beautiful imagery of [the film] is deployed in support of a moral system — a blunt promise of rewards for good behavior — not much more sophisticated than that of Santa and the Easter Bunny.
"[3] On 19 March 1967, it was paired with the 1959 American short The Boy Who Owned a Melephant as an episode of the television anthology series CBS Children's Film Festival.
[5] A four-minute clip of the film is on the rotating list of programming on the cable television network Classic Arts Showcase.
[citation needed] A version of the film was released in the United States on 30 June 1993 by Columbia TriStar Home Video, under the label "Children's Treasures Present.
"[citation needed] Homevision released the film in video, combined with Albert Lamorisse's fantasy short The Red Balloon on 13 June 2000.