This celebrated classic evokes the bucolic life of mountain farmers in the tale of a girl (17-year-old Hideko Takamine) who cares for a colt until her family sells it to the army, which was ever in need of fresh animals for an expanding war. Fascinating in its year-round photography (each season attributed to a different cinematographer), Horses was both compelling and influential in its near-plotless realism (which critic Noel Burch has compared to the French classic Farrebique). But the film is chiefly known in the United States for the early collaboration of Akira Kurosawa, whose apprenticeship became "assistant directorship" when he was left with the extensive location shooting while director Yamamoto continued making his Tokyo-based comedies.