Animation Artifacts &Illustration 15 Jan 2006 09:25 am
Animal Farm horses
Dredging Up More Memories:
When I was young, of course, I was under the Disney influence. I can remember with absolute clarity the day I went to see Lady And The Tramp for the first time at my local theater. 1955; I was nine years old. My parents allowed me to go alone, but I had to take and supervise my younger brothers and our cousins. It was another era. 
The year that film was completed was also the year Halas and Batchelor‘s Animal Farm was released.
I don’t remember it being released theatrically in the US, but it took another four years for that British film to make it to our local tv programming where I first saw it. I hadn’t read the book, so I was completely unaware of the story. The film was overwhelming, and I was completely taken with Boxer, the horse that represented the strength and will of the farm.
This was different for me – grown-up animation. There was no looking back.
1959 was the same year I found Halas’ Technique of Film Animation in my local library. Now I could read about the making of this unique movie.
It only took another two years for me to be completely dedicated to the films of the Hubleys and another 11 years for me to be working for them. Just before John was to leave for England to direct Watership Down we had a short conversation. I’d brought up Animal Farm as a serious attempt to make an adult film and told him I was looking forward to seeing his work on this film. He then told me that he thought that the bungled job Halas & Batchelor had done on the film was a great regret to him. “What a film that could have made,” were his exact words.
Pretty funny that it was that same year Hubley’s assistant gave me a gift of the Halas book.
I thought of all this yesterday after visiting Cartoon Modern and seeing the new links that Amid had put up on his site. He has a great resource there, and I look forward daily to what new items he’ll send our way.
An illustration from Ralph Steadman’s book, “Animal Farm.”
Charles Solomon has a couple of interesting articles in the New York Times today. One is on Miyazaki‘s son who is preparing an animated feature. The second is about the success of non-computer animated features in the race for the Oscars.
on 16 Jan 2006 at 5:36 am 1.AMID said …
Great post as usual, Mike. I’ve been enjoying your blog immensely, from your thoughts on storyboarding to all these remembrances from days past. It’s interesting to hear Hubley’s thoughts on ANIMAL FARM. I think it’s a commendable film for what they tried to do, but Halas is no Hubley. I don’t think he had the strong point of view or the forcefulness of vision that was needed to execute a film with such a powerful message. As it is, it’s not a bad film, a bit slow as I recall, but I can see Hubley’s point. The bigger tragedy though is that Hubley never got a chance to make a commercial feature. The industry might be very different today if he’d been allowed to make FINIAN’S RAINBOW in the 1950s.
on 16 Jan 2006 at 9:03 am 2.Mark Mayerson said …
I saw Animal Farm after reading the book and was outraged that they changed the ending. Later, when I found out that CIA money was used to help finance the film, the ending made sense. Orwell’s point was that revolutions become as corrupt as the regimes that they replace. The CIA’s point of view (and the need for a happy ending) was that Communism should be resisted to make things better.
The film’s design is also heavily influenced by Farmyard Symphony, a 1938 Silly Symphony.
As a result of the above, I have a hard time taking the film seriously. I think that, at best, it’s a false start for the concept of adult animation.
on 16 Jan 2006 at 9:51 am 3.Michael said …
If only the Bush CIA would put some money into animation maybe more would be accomplished. I think the problem with Animal Farm was that it wasn’t opinionate enough to really work. Propaganda should go over the top, but Halas wasn’t ever able to do that on film.
Certainly, the film wasn’t the start of adult animation. Commercially, Fantasia probably kicked that notion into gear. Nor was it really a good film, given its source, but Animal Farm certainly had its influences – me for one.