War Horse

Synopsis: Dartmoor,1914: To his wife's dismay farmer Narracott buys a thoroughbred horse rather than a plough animal, but when his teenaged son Albert trains the horse and calls him Joey, the two becoming inseparable. When his harvest fails, the farmer has to sell Joey to the British cavalry and he is shipped to France where, after a disastrous offensive he is captured by the Germans and changes hands twice more before he is found, caught in the barbed wire in No Man's Land four years later and freed. He is returned behind British lines where Albert, now a private, has been temporarily blinded by gas, but still recognizes his beloved Joey. However, as the Armistice is declared Joey is set to be auctioned off. After all they have been through will Albert and Joey return home together?


 Design: BLT Associates, with TEA  credited for the landscape version.

George Stubbs, the painter would have loved this poster, as would have Henry Landseer, it's such a majestic portrait of an animal, all personality, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if it will be advertising hair products on a television screen near me very soon. That aside this is a poster for a film where war is very much the backdrop and not the focus, as you can see in the poster it's horse and man with the war happening somewhere in the background just over their shoulder. The structure of the poster reinforces this candy box version of war by recalling some of the stylised heroism used in draft posters of the time. As for variants, there are none, just one landscape version which shows us more sky and little more war but keeps the viewers eye on the horse. Not much else to say really