Harry & Snowman

Synopsis:  Amish plough horse, Snowman, was bound for the glue factory, when Dutch immigrant horse trainer, Harry deLeyer, spotted him on the slaughter truck and rescued him for the princely sum of eighty dollars. In less than two years, Harry and his horse went on to win the triple crown of show- jumping, beating the nation’s blue bloods. They both became famous, travelling around the world together and appearing on popular television shows.

Harry and Snowman is kind of the reverse of another recent ‘horse’ movie; Spielberg’s War Horse (2011) which told the story of a thoroughbred horse bought at great expense and, initially, used as a farm plough horse where a lifelong bond between boy and animal was formed.  Here, a young man buys a plough horse for next to nothing and, in the process of turning him into a champion, develops an inseparable relationship with him. The other difference is that this is not a fictionalised story; it’s a documentary.

Harry deLeyer. the eighty-five-year-old “Galloping Grandfather” is an endearing old man, still actively involved in the horse industry and he tells his story with charm and a twinkle in his eye. And the story he has to tell is remarkable, told in fairly standard documentary style using lots of archival imagery and footage interspersed with a series of talking heads including his daughter, his son, a couple of riding colleagues and a bunch of hilarious former students from the exclusive Knox School on Long Island where Harry was their horse trainer. These women, now in their sixties and seventies, still seem smitten by the man who almost didn’t get the job because he was so handsome he might have been a distraction to the girls.

The bulk of the film, as one might expect, is devoted to the tale of what became known as the ‘Cinderella horse’ and that aspect is fascinating, both for the skill of Harry and his horse, and in its portrayal of show-jumping as a centrepiece of the socialite world of New York in the 1950s. But the documentary is also concerned with Harry’s life story before and after his fateful meeting with Snowman. There’s much of interest here: his involvement with the Dutch resistance during World War II and the suggestion that he might have been a spy (“I don’t like to talk about that,” says a young Harry on the Dick Cavert Show); as well as hints at his darker side, and, of course, the drive, ambition and total devotion to his horses that resulted in his son leaving home at seventeen and the eventual break-up of his marriage. But these elements, especially those to do with personality traits that might have been less palatable are mostly hinted at and not really explored with any depth.

What we’re left with is the dominating voice of a kindly old octogenarian who guides us through the astounding and moving events of his relationship with Snowman. What it doesn’t do is to provide us with the kind of insight that might have elevated this film from being a well-made and entertaining doco to something more.

 

 

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