Dir. John Halas & Joy Batchelor · 1954 · 72 min · back in UK cinemas in 4K
George Orwell's 1945 fable becomes Britain's first animated feature film. The animals of a run-down farm throw out their drunken owner and set up a farm run by the animals, for the animals, and what follows is Orwell's satire of revolution turned into cels. John Halas and Joy Batchelor directed and produced it, Mátyás Seiber wrote the music, John Reed supervised the animation, Gordon Heath narrates and Maurice Denham voices the animals.
The new version is a 4K restoration. The BFI's own release notes say the new master is made from the original 35mm successive frame negative held in the BFI National Archive. According to the BFI's release listing, it reaches UK cinemas on 23 October, followed by a limited-edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray set on 23 November and BFI Player on 21 December.
The craft is the first thing the sources reach for. Jez Stewart, the BFI's animation curator, writes in a BFI feature on the making of the film about research trips to farm buildings, a "tension chart" that planned how music and colour would support the story, and Seiber's score, which he treats as essential to the film's moods. He also credits Halas and Batchelor with resisting investors' requests, such as a Stalin-like moustache for Napoleon.
Not everyone is as warm, but even the cooler reviews find something to like. Dan Engler, reviewing it for the Lozier Institute, calls it a faithful adaptation that follows the novel's plot closely, with striking visuals that include "beautiful scenes but also grim ones". Contemporary praise was strong too: as Wikipedia's summary of the 1955 reviews records, C. A. Lejeune in The Observer called it a film "for the eye, ear, heart and mind".
The complaint is tone. Roog at Moria gives it two stars and finds the film uneasily caught between a light, Disney-style approach, with a cute duckling and comic frolics, and Orwell's bitter satire. The middle of the film, he says, is where the fable's satire comes into its own.
Rendered as cutsie children's animation necessarily bluntens the book's bite.Roog, Moria Reviews
There is a second reservation that has nothing to do with the screen. The film was covertly part-funded by the CIA, and Halas, Batchelor and their crew were not told. Stewart's complaint is that this story "has unfortunately overshadowed the creative efforts behind the film." That is a reason to know the history, not a reason to skip the film.
The reviews split, with warm period notices, a measured modern one and a two-star dissent. The score of three and a half sits between them.
The ending is where almost every source stops. According to the BFI and Wikipedia, the film's finale was reworked so that the animals rise up against the pigs, and later research found the CIA altered it. Moria calls the upbeat ending the most jarring change from the book, Engler calls it "unrealistic, to say the least", and the 1955 Manchester Guardian said that Orwell would not have liked this one change. Stewart, by contrast, counts the open-ended finale among the film's strengths. If you know the novel, this is the part to watch for.
Tap whatever sounds like you. This is a rough guide built from what critics said, not a verdict.
Pick any that apply.
This is a cinema release first. The BFI lists the 4K restoration in UK cinemas from 23 October, and the sources we read give no dates for other countries, so check your local cinema listings. A 4K UHD and Blu-ray set is listed for 23 November. Availability varies by country.