Animal Farm (1954 film)

Animal Farm
Poster[1]
Directed by
Written by
  • Joy Batchelor
  • John Halas
  • Borden Mace
  • Philip Stapp
  • Lothar Wolff
Based onAnimal Farm
by George Orwell
Produced by
  • John Halas
  • Joy Batchelor
StarringMaurice Denham
Narrated byGordon Heath
Music byMátyás Seiber
Production
company
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 29 December 1954 (1954-12-29) (New York City)[4]
  • 7 January 1955 (1955-01-07) (London)
Running time
72 minutes
Countries
  • United Kingdom
  • United States[5]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$350,000[6]

Animal Farm is a 1954 animated drama film directed by documentarians John Halas and Joy Batchelor. It was produced by Halas and Batchelor and funded in part by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who also made changes to the original script.[7][8][9] Based on the 1945 novella Animal Farm by George Orwell, the film features narration by Gordon Heath, with the voices of all animals provided by Maurice Denham.[10]

The rights for a film adaptation were purchased from Orwell's widow Sonia after she was approached by agents working for the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a branch of the CIA that dealt with the use of culture to combat communism.[11]

Despite being a box office flop, taking fifteen years to generate a profit, the film quickly became a staple in classrooms across the United Kingdom, the United States[12][13][14] and other English-speaking countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand into the 2000s.

  1. ^ "Animal Farm World". Animalfarmworld.com. Archived from the original on 6 October 2017. Retrieved 23 September 2017.
  2. ^ TCM.com
  3. ^ Animal Farm (1955)-Note-TCM.com
  4. ^ John Reed (12 April 2013). "Animal Farm Timeline". The Paris Review. Retrieved 28 September 2016. Animal Farm ... premieres in New York City at the chic Paris Theatre, December 29, 1954.
  5. ^ "Detail view of Movies Page". Afi.com. Retrieved 23 September 2017.
  6. ^ "'Animal Farm' Took 15 Years To Recoup its $350,000 Cost". Variety. 9 January 1974. p. 77.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Senn, Samantha (2015). "All Propaganda is Dangerous, but Some are More Dangerous than Others: George Orwell and the Use of Literature as Propaganda". Journal of Strategic Security. 8 (3). University of South Florida Board of Trustees: 151. doi:10.5038/1944-0472.8.3S.1483. JSTOR 26465253.
  10. ^ Maurice Denham - IMDb
  11. ^ Senn, Samantha (2015). "All Propaganda is Dangerous, but Some are More Dangerous than Others: George Orwell and the Use of Literature as Propaganda". Journal of Strategic Security. 8 (3): 149–161. doi:10.5038/1944-0472.8.3S.1483. ISSN 1944-0464. JSTOR 26465253.
  12. ^ Senn, Samantha (2015). "All Propaganda is Dangerous, but Some are More Dangerous than Others: George Orwell and the Use of Literature as Propaganda". Journal of Strategic Security. 8 (3): 151. doi:10.5038/1944-0472.8.3S.1483. JSTOR 26465253.
  13. ^ Rodden, John (September 1991). "Reputation, Canon-Formation, Pedagogy: George Orwell in the Classroom". College English. 53 (5): 505. doi:10.2307/377460. JSTOR 377460 – via JSTOR.
  14. ^ Shaw, Tony (October 2003). "Some Writers are More Equal than Others: George Orwell, the State and Cold War Privilege". Cold War History. 4 (1): 145. doi:10.1080/14682740312331391774. S2CID 153507299 – via Research Gate.