Animal Farm (1954)

Animal Farm is a 1954 British-American animated comedy-drama film produced by Halas and Batchelor, based on the book of the same name by George Orwell. It was the first British animated feature (Water for Firefighting and Handling Ships, two feature length wartime training films, were produced earlier, but did not receive a formal cinema release). The US CIA paid for the filming, part of the American cultural offensive during the Cold War, and influenced how Orwell's ideas were to be presented. The CIA initially funded Louis de Rochemont to begin work on a film version of Orwell's work and he hired Halas & Batchelor, an animation firm in London that had made propaganda films for the British government.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Stunning animation for the year it was made.
 * 2) It made history by being the first British animated film to achieve worldwide release.
 * 3) Excellent voice acting from Maurice Denham, who is also the only voice actor.
 * 4) While the ending is tacked on and doesn’t fit Orwell’s message (revolutions only succeed in replacing one cruel tyrant with another), the pigs finally get an actual comeuppance, after being “Karma Houdinis” in the book.
 * 5) Decent adherence to the source material.
 * 6) Nice score.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Some moments can be too scary for kids, such as Snowball being killed by the dogs.
 * 2) Because the CIA funded this film, some changes had to be made, including downplaying Orwell’s message that capitalism and communism weren’t so different, making Snowball less heroic, and adding the aforementioned happy ending.

Differences between the film and the novel

 * Old Major's death happens during the song instead of three days later in his sleep.
 * Several characters such as Clover are not in the film.
 * The battle between the pigs and humans happens after they drive away Mr. Jones.
 * Unlike in the original story, Napoleon does not tell lies about Snowball and also carries out his plans for a windmill.
 * Napoleon is the one who tells the animals that "Beasts of England" is now forbidden, in the book, it is Squealer.
 * Only the pigs and a few of the humans have dialogue throughout the movie.
 * Because of the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in the film, the ending is changed drastically from that of the original book.

Trivia

 * In 2004, a public domain DVD distributor called Digiview Productions released this film on DVD. Because this film had a Super 8mm release in the 1970s, Digiview had assumed it was in the public domain. However, Halas and Batchelor had still owned the copyright, and won a lawsuit against Digiview, resulting in its collapse, however Digiview restarted two years later as Digiview Entertainment.
 * Much of the staff that worked on this adaptation had previously worked at Disney.