War Horse (2011)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
On the brink of the First World War, Albert's beloved horse Joey is sold to the Cavalry by his father. Against the backdrop of the Great War, Joey begins an odyssey full of danger, joy, and sorrow, and he transforms everyone he meets along the way. Meanwhile, Albert, unable to forget his equine friend, searches the battlefields of France to find Joey and bring him home.
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3 films that influenced War Horse
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The first act of “War Horse’’ is its most nakedly nostalgic, with camera shots evoking the long, glowing corridors and side-lit doorways of Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley’’ and “The Quiet Man.’’ Silhouettes at sunset, Albert’s sainted mother (Emily Watson), a girl passing through with the red Technicolor hair of Maureen O’Hara - this is the work of an obsessive movie-lover recombining the pieces of his passions.
When the colorful Devon townsfolk lean along a fence, watching as Albert and his thoroughbred struggle to plow a field, the director's more focused on evoking Fordian community (" The Quiet Man ," " How Green Was My Valley ") than Joey's potential laming as the thoroughbred's fragile legs give way.
The first section may remind one of John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952).
There are hints of "How Green was My Valley" and "The Quiet Man" as Spielberg points his lens at majestic skies, rolling hills, farm field fences and colorful townsfolk.
But any resemblance to the real Britain circa 1910 is accidental; this part of “War Horse” is really set in the imaginary version of places like Devon as mythologized by Hollywood, notably in John Ford classics like “How Green Was My Valley” and “The Quiet Man.” (I am aware that those movies are set in Wales and Ireland, respectively; those distinctions are lost on most American viewers, and in the cinematic context they don’t much matter.)
…lighting and cinematography) bring to mind classic films like The Quiet Man and similar pictures of that era.
Some scenes will remind viewers of “The Red Badge of Courage,” while others will echo “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
“I will find you,” Albert tells Joey, repeating the words Daniel Day-Lewis says to Madeleine Stowe in “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992), if not the sentiment.
Albert is grief-struck and, doing his best Daniel Day Lewis from The Last of the Mohicans, swears to Joey, “Wherever you are, I will find you.”