Horse (film)

Uma (Also known as Horse) is a 1941 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Kajiro Yamamoto which starred Hideko Takamine who Yamamoto had filmed in his prior film Composition Class three years before, but the film was actually completed by assistant director Akira Kurosawa. It follows the story of Ine Onoda, the eldest daughter of a poor family of farmers, who raises a colt from birth and comes to love the horse dearly. When the horse is grown, the government orders it auctioned and sold to the army. Ine struggles to prevent the sale.

Overview

The film is an tale about a young girl and the colt she raises from its birth. But its also about the struggle of farmers existing on the edge of poverty. Akira Kurosawa is credited as the film's production coordinator, which is the term first assistant director. But Kurosawa's signature is all over this work and is the last film he was to work on as an assistant before starting his own directing career. The film took 3 years to plan and a year to film and Kajiro Yamamoto had to commute to the far mountain location but had to turn his attention to his money making comedies, so left to go back to Toyko and left it in the hands of his assistant of a young Akira Kurosawa.

Cast

• Hideko Takamine as Ine
• Kamatari Fujiwara as Jinjiro Onoda, Ine's father
• Chieko Takehisa as Saku Onoda, Ine's mother

Plot

A young girl, Ine Onoda, from a poor village family wants nothing more than to own a horse. Her family soon takes in a pregnant mare which they have signed on to care for over the winter. Financial troubles push the family towards the edge of ruin and neither they nor the horse is eating much. The horse becomes very ill and the vet determines only grass will save it. Ine walks many miles through the snow to a hot spring where grass grows year round and saves the horse's life. That spring it gives birth to a colt and it looks as if Ine will finally have her horse. But when the colt is grown, the government orders it auctioned and sold to the army, as unpaid bills force the family to sell the colt. Ine takes a job in a mill to save money to buy her horse back. On the day of the auction, she is outbid and cries as the horse is led away for the last time.

References

External links

• Uma (1941) at the Internet Movie Database