Pig Brother is watching you: 70 years of Animal Farm, Britain’s first animated feature

The evening of 13 January 1955 was bitterly cold with blustery snow. It was a hardy crowd that gathered at the Ritz cinema in London for the first UK showing of Animal Farm, a feature-length animated adaptation of George Orwell’s novella. 

The book was first published a decade previously, a political ‘fairy story’ of animals taking over a farm from its cruel human owner, only to succumb to worse treatment under the tyranny of rule by pigs. This new film version had already had its premiere in New York a fortnight previously, a pointer to the American finance and oversight behind the production, which we now know involved covert funding from the CIA. But the audience had been invited to see what was very much a British film, made in London and Stroud by Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films, the country’s leading animation producers.

When the contract to make the film was first announced in December 1951, a big part of the press story was that it would be the first ever animated feature film made in Britain. It took three years to complete – 18 months longer than initially advertised, adding to the curiosity surrounding its release. 

This delay meant that when the film finally arrived it was hot on the heels of a controversy surrounding the BBC’s television adaptation of Orwell’s 1984. Featuring Peter Cushing as Winston Smith and a script by Nigel Kneale, the first broadcast of this live performance on 12 December 1954 had led to a (likely small) number of complaints to the BBC, a belch of outrage from parts of the press, and comments in the House of Commons. None of which stopped a repeat presentation on 16 December, which gathered the biggest television audience since the Coronation. It set the stage for the marketing and promotion of Animal Farm but also offered a clear sign of the political dimension to most responses towards anything to do with Orwell.

The first name on screen in Animal Farm is that of Louis De Rochemont, an American producer who had made his name in newsreels, particularly the groundbreaking March of Time series that brought a new sense of journalism to the form. De Rochemont was trying to establish himself as a producer of feature films and had an exclusivity deal with Columbia Pictures for his services, with the exception that he could make “educational pictures” independently. And that was the umbrella under which Animal Farm was initiated, the company RD-DR: Reader’s Digest – De Rochemont. Nowhere on screen or in the publicity surrounding the film is there any mention of the fact that the impetus and initial funding behind the production came from the CIA – a fact that even those involved in making the film were largely unaware of.

Like Radio Free Europe, jazz music and abstract expressionism, Animal Farm was seen as useful fuel for the covert cultural Cold War that was fermenting between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a satire on the Russian revolution, the rise of Stalin, and the communist ideology that surrounded him, parts of Orwell’s allegory were very much suited to the anti-communist agenda. But other parts of the book, such as those which highlighted the West’s hypocritical relationship with Soviet Russia, and the pessimistic ending, were downplayed or removed from the film’s narrative under instruction from its “investors”, as they were often referred to in correspondence between the film’s producers.

The US press response to Animal Farm’s film premiere was certainly more flavoured by the heightened political tensions of the Cold War than the later British reviews. There is a publicity poster for the original release (shown below) that has always intrigued me as it highlights a quote from the New York Daily News: “You’ll have the laughs of your life!” Animal Farm has many qualities as a film, but hilarity is not one of them. In fuller context, the intention of the line becomes clearer as part of a red-baiting opinion piece:

“Communists, filmed as pigs, are on display at Manhattan’s Paris Theatre. Commies aren’t allowed to peek at this classic animated cartoon in Technicolor, but you’re permitted to attend, and you’ll have the laughs of your life. Come to think of it, how about some enterprising and patriotic TV network here bringing over that BBC ‘1984’ thriller-diller and letting us have a look at it, too? It’ll be educational; and as an added attraction we’ll be able to hear and enjoy the most entertaining screeches in TV history, from our own apoplectic Commies.”

One of the prevailing themes in coverage was a questioning of the suitability of the film for all audiences. Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times stated “the cruelties that occur from time to time are more realistic and shocking than any of the famous sadisms that have occurred in Disney’s films” and concluded “don’t make the mistake of thinking it is for children just because it is a cartoon.”

The British press combed through the reaction of their US counterparts in advance of the film’s London premiere, eliciting articles from a range of publications including the Daily Telegraph, the industry focused Daily Film Renter and the regional Gloucestershire Echo, who picked up on the fact that the film was partly made in Stroud. 

Gossipy hearsay of the film’s “horrors” and its adult nature was ideal to restoke the fires of controversy on the back of the BBC’s 1984 and fill a few more column inches. There were many leading references in headlines to “Pig Brother”, conflating the two works. But to be fair, this was a connection encouraged by the film’s distributors in their marketing. Associated British-Pathe’s publicity leaflet included the phrasing “Pig Brother is watching you… in the Wonder Technicolor Cartoon Animal Farm from the book by George Orwell, author of the sensational 1984!”

Reviews in the British mainstream press were generally positive, but the differences from Orwell’s original work, particularly the ending, were a recurrent theme. The Times review was headlined “Orwell Diluted”, although it described the film as “salutatory” and as “a vivid and clever piece of work… [that] has been told conscientiously and sharply”. 

The Observer’s film critic C.A. Lejeune praised the film’s “high courage and imagination” and made a point of trying to separate her opinion of the film from any thoughts about the book and its politics. In the socialist magazine Tribune, future Labour politician Gerald Kaufman’s intelligent review highlights many of the more deliberate political changes to the text, speculating that they were made in order to not jeopardise the film’s American market. The truth that these were often the targeted amendments requested by the CIA advisors would not come out for many years. But Kaufman still finished his piece with the cautionary recommendation: “It is a film no-one who cares about the cinema should miss.”

Having seen the film for themselves, the theme of the film’s suitability for general audiences was echoed in the British press, particularly regionally. The Middlesex Independent questioned the film’s ‘Universal’ certificate from the BBFC in an article headlined “Grave mistake by censors?” The News Chronicle in Manchester sent a journalist and a photographer with an infra-red light to photograph children watching the “horrifying” film, published under the headline “This Was No Mickey Mouse”.

Leafing through press cuttings about the film’s release, compiled by Halas & Batchelor in a scrapbook and now held in the BFI National Archive, what is most evident is how unexpected a serious cartoon was to most audiences. The success of Disney had laid expectations for animated features that this remarkable film simply did not fit. Regardless of the good reviews, and perhaps because of the questions about suitability for general audiences, the film struggled to get proper distribution.

If only other press outlets had tried as hard as Manchester’s Daily Despatch. One of the most notable elements in the film is that all the animals are voiced by just one man, Maurice Denham. But the Daily Despatch came up with a neat competition to recast the main characters with a range of A-list actors offered up for selection as the ideal cast. For example, the choices for the dictator Napoleon were Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, Peter Ustinov and Marlon Brando. 

Twenty-four readers won a share of a £250 prize with their choices of Peter Ustinov as Napoleon; Spencer Tracy as Boxer; Michael Redgrave as Snowball; Alec Guinness as Benjamin; and James Mason as Farmer Jones. This was the selection that matched the judgement of a panel of experts. All opinions are equal; but some are more equal than others.