STORY TOOLS

Animal Farm

-- Video Business, 11/15/2004

Color, NR, 75 min. plus supplements, stereo fullscreen, Street: Nov. 9, $24.95; First Run: L, Dec. 1954, NA

HOME VISION

Home Vision's 50th anniversary edition of the 1954 animated adaptation of George Orwell's classic "fairy tale" (as he called it) sports a meticulously restored digital transfer of the film. Most vintage movies get that treatment these days, but it's particularly important to note in this case because the British-made Animal Farm, which has muted colors and dark tones throughout, hasn't looked as good in previous video incarnations. Even though the Cold War ended more than a decade ago, Orwell's anti-Communist fable--in which brutalized animals drive off a drunken farmer and attempt self-governance with disastrous results--remains just as trenchant as ever. In the principal supplement, a half-hour BBC documentary from 1995 entitled Down on Animal Farm, we learn that producers John Halas and Joy Batchelor got moral support from Britain's Ministry of Information (for whom they made propaganda films during World War II) and covert financial support from the CIA. Actor Maurice Denham, who supplied all the animal voices, reveals that the original idea was to use actual animal sounds and present Orwell's dialog in subtitles. Animators Bob Godfrey and Harold Whitaker not only relate anecdotes but also brandish pencil drawings and completed cells from the production. Another interesting supplement presents the original storyboards with the film's soundtrack overlaid. The commentary by animation historian Brian Sibley is unusually articulate and cogent; some of his remarks appear to have been scripted, but he's clearly improvising as well, and there's very little extraneous material. Home Vision has done a wonderful job here, and in these intensely political times, Animal Farm will have especial resonance to viewers who might be seeing it for the first time. --Ed Hulse

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