ANIMAL FARM |
| CREDITS: Director: Louis De Rochemont, Joy Batchelor & John Halos Cast: Maurice
Denham & Gordon Heath UK 1955 INTRODUCTION: Re-released in a brand spanking new print, Britain's first Full-length animated feature gave us a taste of what Orwell would be like given the Disney treatment. SYNOPSIS: The animals of Manor Farm revolt against the drunken farmer Jones, determined to run the farm, renamed Animal Farm, for themselves, but things do not go according to plan as a megalomaniac pig, aptly named Napoleon, seizes power and becomes more oppressive than the erstwhile Jones. REVIEW: Now call me paranoid if you like but I suspect there may be a veiled critique of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia hidden in the subtext here. No hear me out, think of Jones as the Tsar and the pigs as the Bolshevik Vanguard Party, with The Old Major as Marx, Napoleon as Stalin and Snowball as a sort of Lenin/Trotsky hybrid. Ok maybe it's not that subtle but it is a fascinating parable, that for many on the left and right completely misses the key points to the rise of Stalinism. Indeed Orwell occupies an odd place politically, hated by the right for his communist sympathies and despised by the left for his perceived selling-out. This leaves little audience for his works as evident by the appalling turn-out for last years screen adaptation of the post sell-out work "Keep The Aspidistra Flying". The Sci-Fi fans of "1984" are peculiarly enough his most ardent supporters, shame really as he was a good writer. Heath's rich narration bring Orwell's prose to life and coupled with Denham's versatility in voicing all the animals provides a truly engrossing story. The film itself is sumptuously mounted with some wonderful touches, the film makers have obviously learnt a lot from the USSR's own post revolutionary film makers including a montage cut lifted straight from Eisenstein where shots of the starving animals are crosscut with shots of the decadent porcines. Fear not for they have also learned from Disney and have diverged from Orwell's text to include a comic relief duckling and a happy ending that has yet to occur in the real world. Farmyard animals of the world unite, you have nothing to loose but your bridles? Mutt's Rating: **** |