
Tales of Unease
David Stuart Davies explores the dark fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Nov
20
Nov
27
‘All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than
others’
Eric Arthur Blair, novelist, essayist and journalist was born in 1903.
You will know this remarkable man of letters as George Orwell who produced at
least two of the greatest novels of the mid-twentieth century. His most famous books
are Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1950). Both are clever
pessimistic satires about the threat of political tyranny. While each novel
carries a strong message, they are wrapped up in engaging narratives, which appeal
to a wide readership.
At first glance Animal Farm
appears to be a dark fairy tale but it is a satirical allegory directed
primarily against Stalin’s Russia and the failure of the revolution to bring
justice to the people. The success of the fable is that it can be enjoyed on
both levels – that of an anthropomorphic fantasy or a serious political
commentary. Manor Farm is Russia and the drunken, incompetent farmer Jones the
Czar. The farmyard animals represent the
individuals involved in the conflict, such as the pigs: Old Major (Lenin),
Snowball (Trotsky) and Napoleon (Stalin) while the dogs are his secret police.
By having the animals casting out the lazy incompetent Jones, taking over the
farm and running it themselves Orwell’s allegory suggests that rather than
eliminating the capitalistic regime as it was intended, the Russian revolution
merely replaced it with another corrupt hierarchy.
An animated movie based on the novel was released in 1954 from the Halas
& Bachelor Studio, directed by the founders John Halas and Joy Bachelor.
The film was commissioned in 1951 but because of the slow painstaking process
of animation at the time, it took three years to complete, involving eighty
animators. Remarkably, the funding for the project came from America, from the
Central Intelligence Agency to be precise. The CIA saw the movie as part of the
American offensive during the Cold War and they influenced the presentation of
Orwell’s ideas, including the ending of the movie, the message of which stated
that ‘Stalin’s regime is not only as bad as Jones but worse and more sadistic’.
Some criticism was levelled at this harsher ending, with one newspaper
reporting, ‘Orwell would not have liked this one change, with its substitution
of commonplace propaganda for his reticent melancholy satire.’ However the
American backers were delighted; they thought it made their point very
effectively.
Remarkably all the animal voices and noises in the film were voiced by
one actor: Maurice Denham. The visual styling, which was created deliberately
to attract a young audience, was regarded by the film critic of the Guardian as ‘Disney-turned serious’. The
movie is now regarded as a classic.
In 1950 the British Foreign Office secretly hired artists and writers
Norman Pett and Don Freeman to adapt Animal
Farm into a comic strip. This was not published in the U.K. but ran in a
number of foreign newspapers.
A TV movie of the novel appeared in 1999 and it too received criticism
because of the altered ending. In this version, after Napoleon’s dictatorship
has led the farm into self-destruction, with only a few of good animals
surviving, a car arrives with a farmer, his wife and children – the new owners
of Manor Farm. Jessie, the kind and wise old sheep dog (who acted as the
storyteller, voiced by Julia Ormond) states that she will not let this family
‘make the same mistakes’ of the neglect of Jones or the abuse of Napoleon, and
is aware that the small remnant of animals will now have to work alongside the
new masters to restore the Farm. A rosy glow finale which is not quite what
George Orwell intended.
In general the movie was criticised for its loose adaptation of the book
and its simplicity. In particular it was regarded as too dark and political for
children while being too simplistic for adults. In this version real animals were used along
with CGI versions of the main characters created by the Jim Henson’s Creature
Shop (home of the Muppets) which gave a greater sense of reality to the story.
While Maurice Denham was the solo voice artist in the 1954 movie, this production boasted a raft of star names voicing the animals including Peter Ustinov (Old Major), Patrick Stewart (Napoleon), Kelsey Grammer (Snowball), Paul Scofield (Boxer) and Ian Holm (Squealer). There were rumours in 2012 that Andy Serkis was about to direct a 3D version of the book but nothing came of this.
Interestingly, it was radio which first came up with a dramatised version
of the story of Animal Farm. A BBC
radio adaptation scripted by Orwell was broadcast in January 1947. The production met with his full approval.
Sadly he died in 1950 and so never lived to see the Halas-Bachelor movie.
There was a further radio production in January 2013, which also used the
author’s own dramatisation of the book, broadcast on Radio Four. Tamsin Gregg
narrated and the cast also included Nicky Henson as Napoleon, Toby Jones as
Squealer and Ralph Ineson as Boxer.
There have been two stage adaptations of the book. In 1985 a version with
music by Richard Peaslee and lyrics by the left-wing poet Adrian Mitchell was
staged at the National Theatre and directed by Peter Hall. A one-man play
written and performed by Guy Masterton premiered at the Traverse Theatre in
Edinburgh in January 1995.
It is probably true to say that while the fantasy element of the story –
animals taking control of their own destiny – still has the power to engage an
audience, but perhaps the political elements of the tale, which are in essence
specific to a particular time frame, are somewhat dated and lack the potency
they had when the book was first published. Whether we shall see another
dramatised version is a matter for conjecture.