War Horse is my first truly British film, says Steven Spielberg - The Guardian

Steven Spielberg at the War Horse premiere in London. Photograph: Samir Hussein/WireImage

It was filmed in Devon and Wiltshire, is packed with the UK's top acting talent and saw the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at its royal premiere on Sunday night. Now director Steven Spielberg has said that he regards War Horse as his first truly British film.

1. War Horse
2. Production year: 2011
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 146 mins
6. Directors: Steven Spielberg
7. Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, David Kross, David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Jeremy Irvine, Niels Arestrup, Peter Mullan, Toby Kebbell, Tom Hiddleston
8. More on this film

"This could only have been shot in England," he told a press conference in London on Monday morning. "After I heard the reaction last night at the Odeon in Leicester Square, I realised that I'd made my first British film with War Horse. Through and through."

Spielberg said the epic had been inspired in part by John Ford's Welsh-set 1941 film How Green Was My Valley. Like his heroes Ford and David Lean, he had attempted to use the British countryside as a character in its own right.

An adaptation of the 1982 book by Michael Morpurgo, War Horse was filmed in locations including Ringmoor Down on Dartmoor and Castle Combe, Wiltshire. Spielberg said the sunsets in the film, including the final shot of the horse against the sky, were not digitally manipulated: "I only got five shots because the sun goes down awfully fast in Devon." He added that the production "stretched the budget to go to Devon and it was worth every penny".

Set in the first world war, War Horse became a runaway hit when first staged at the National Theatre in 2007. It tells the story of an animal who is bought for a farm, then sold to the army, where it experiences the war from both the German and Allied sides. At the press conference, Morpurgo described the story as "an anthem to peace", noting that Germany was the only territory in which its title was changed, to Comrades.

Spielberg said that he regarded War Horse as a "love story" with the horse as a metaphor for "common sense, or horse sense". He added that he made the film for his daughter, a keen rider, saying: "I don't ride but I know how to muck out a stable."

Richard Curtis, who co-wrote the screenplay, said that for him War Horse was "a film about decency", citing a scene in which a British and German soldier work to free the horse from barbed wire in no man's land. Spielberg added that this was the most challenging scene, as the horse had to stay on its knees: "Their instinct is to get up."

The film used eight horses â€" though two, Finder and Abraham, did most of the work â€" with one trainer and a team of horse whisperers. Spielberg said that a representative of the Humane Society was on set at all times to end or veto shots if she thought they would cause stress to the horses. The animals were played by puppets in the stage production.

Though his battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers are regarded as some of the most brutally realistic in cinema history, Spielberg said that the conflict in War Horse was filmed with a family audience in mind: "There's only 12 to 15 minutes of combat and hardly any blood."

Morpurgo said that a scene of a field strewn with dead horses and soldiers eloquently showed "the waste and pity of war, in Wilfred Owen's phrase. Blood and gore weren't necessary."

Emily Watson, who plays Rosie Narracott in the film, said that War Horse was particularly timely as the final veteran of the Somme, Harry Patch, died three years ago: "The first world war is leaving living memory."

Morpurgo added that in the final scene of the sitcom Blackadder Goes Forth, broadcast on BBC1 in 1989, Curtis had created with co-writer Ben Elton "one of the great scenes of cinema on the first world war". The characters are shown running into a hail of gunfire before the scene fades to a field of poppies.

Spielberg, 66, told the press conference that he had no plans to stop making films. "Clint Eastwood is a friend of mine â€" he's 81 and still making films. I'm waiting for the phone call when Clint says he's hanging up his spurs." His next film will be Lincoln, an adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography Team of Rivals starring Daniel Day Lewis as the president.

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