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In what should be a warm and bountiful corner of an unnamed land, Farmer Jones lets crops rot on the stalk and allows his animals to go hungry. All he wants to do is drink himself into daily obliviion and there's enough in the larder to support such a cause. The farm animals are at a loss, unsure even if they have the means to change their lot. It takes a wise and trusted speaker (essentially Marx) to state their destiny, convincing them to revolt. So, led by Snowball (Trotsky) and Napoleon (Stalin), the animals turf out hated Jones and inscribe the rules of their new society upon a barn wall. Powered by the partnership of Boxer and Benjamin, Animal Farm becomes a co-operative of full equality.
Orwell's point is, of course, that Russia's great experiment failed appallingly, crumbling into a state of despotic oppression. This descent of betrayal shades every line of his novel, incrementally completing its circle till the pigs attain a human mastery. Unfortunately the subtlety and significance of Orwell's vision is barely transmitted by Animal Farm; broad themes are in place but intricacies are absent, the moments of shattering emotional realisation. In large part this is down to the scant voice-over and dialogue, serving us but a taste of Orwell's rich prose. Sure, it's a brave decision not to provide the animals with speeches, anthropomorphising them, but the images alone are hardly enough.
Still, Maurice Denham's vocal abilities provide some compensation. He voices every animal, without exception, fluidly meshing human and animal tones into a sound unfamiliar. It's certainly not his fault that the animals seem to miss what's going on, to the extent that they don't even harbour suspicions about their leaders that require dismissal. Apart from the feel-good, tacked-on ending, they're completely unreactive. Instead it's Matyas Seiber's score that provides us with dramatic swells and dives, compensating for the lack of action. Unobtrusive but fundamental, his music warns of impending doom, inflates with the joy of victory and acts as an emotional barometer.
For those in the know, Animal Farm is saddled by the honour of being Britain's first animated feature film. Thus the technical standards of its animation have come under fair scrutiny, from which Animal Farm emerges generally untarnished. The bleak atmosphere generated here is a world away from the bright primary colours of ordinary cartoons and their simply drawn characters. Over darkly coloured, broadly textured backgrounds of almost impressionistic intent, smoothly illustrated figures shrug off the yoke of oppression. In certain scenes the cinematography of S. J. Griffiths even manages to move away from physical depiction onto the suggestion, through light and motion, of a scene's purpose. Animal Farm is certainly suited to such an unusual method.
Sadly Batchelor and Halas make it vital to have read Orwell's biting satire on Soviet history before viewing Animal Farm, just to know what's been left out. As it is, the film grasps the superficial aspects of Orwell's allegoric fable without his deeper message. In missing so badly, we're left with an impressive attempt that never matches up to its birthright.
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