Animal Farm (1954)

Propaganda - it's what's for breakfast, or rather, it's what was on iPlayer last night. I've never been that fond of the 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's anti-Stalinist polemic "Animal Farm", but it remains of interest if only because it was the first feature-length British animation to see public release (the Navy were first in 1945, with Handling Ships, but this was never shown in cinemas and if you search for it on Youtube you'll find quite a lot of stuff you wish you hadn't).

Possibly the most interesting thing about Animal Farm is that it was funded by the CIA, who were willing to spend quite a lot of money to ensure the next generation didn't grow up to be filthy commies. To this end, we're granted quite a lot of cutesy duckling action to lure the little ones in before the pig overlords get nasty and the swill really hits the fan. When I was small, I found it all terribly thought-provoking and not a little depressing - sure, it explained how power can corrupt, but it didn't offer any better solutions. Man hands on misery to man.., my younger self thought, but I couldn't shuck the notion that Communism could actually be a really good system if people weren't bastards - something I still believe to this day. True, there's a lot of bastards around, but do we really want to let them win?

Leaving the politics aside, it looks pretty good. Sure, the palette is muted and the animation doesn't have all the bells and whistles we'd expect nowadays, but while it might look dated it doesn't look particularly cheap. The cheapness instead, it turns out, went on the voice acting work, with Gordon Heath narrating and Maurice Denham voicing every single animal. Denham plays it straight, or at least as straight as you can when you're voicing a singing chicken, and the result is decidedly creepy - it is the nonverbal characters such as Boxer the horse who remain most firmly in the memory afterwards.

Tellingly, given the funding source, the film alters Orwell's original sad ending to suggest that revolution might foment once more. All very red-blooded, certainly, but does this really suggest anything other than that the world is determined to repeat its own mistakes in an eternal cycle of hope being torn down by corruption?

If you want to fire your kids up with hope for a better future, this may not be the way to go.