Animal Farm

George Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm is a satirical allegory of totalitarianism, with particular reference to Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Joy Bachelor and John Halas’ 1954 movie version is Britain’s first full-length animated movie. Unsurprisingly, it co-opts-rather unfortunately-familiar elements from the long-established twee Disney tradition and changes Orwell’s ending, but it manages nevertheless to recreate Orwell’s political fable, all the more remarkably considering every human and animal sound reproduced on the soundtrack emanate from one actor, Gordon Heath.