The Two Leons

Most of the world was feeling pretty relieved in 1945, when George Orwell detonated the little bomb he called “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story.” Conceived in 1943 and rejected by several publishers as prematurely anti-Stalinist, the book was initially scheduled for publication in May, which would have coincided with VE day. A paper shortage postponed printing until August, just in time for VJ day – and seven months before Churchill warned undergraduates in Missouri of an iron curtain. Orwell’s prophecy of “1984” may have been skewed (or, once again, premature), but he captured the looming fear and trembling in the wake of peace with unerring accuracy. “Animal Farm” made him famous and was celebrated as a renouncement of totalitarianism everywhere, though its farm life echoed that of the one particular farm run by Uncle Joe.Shortly after Orwell’s death and two years before Stalin’s, an American film producer and newsreel pioneer, Louis de Rochemont, hired Britain’s husband and wife animation team, John Halas and Joy Batchelor, to adapt the book into a cartoon feature – the first ever made in England. In the notes to the DVD, it is suggested that de Rochemont outsourced the project to save on costs and because he questioned the loyalties of homegrown animators: Who better to exploit paranoia than a paranoiac? The film, released in 1955, was a hit, despite criticisms of Disneyfication (mostly on account of a comical duckling) and a happy if unconstitutional ending: The piggy government is violently overthrown by other animals. The United States Information Agency helped with distribution.What was not known then – even by the animators, according to their daughter – was that the novel’s screen rights had been procured by the CIA, whose agent, the future Watergate burglar Howard Hunt, hired de Rochemont. This disclosure has now been offered as an explanation for the film’s comic relief, which in any case does little harm, and its rousing climax, which is happy only in a thematic sense that would have pleased Lenin as much as Jefferson: The cure for revolution is more revolution. Still, the CIA’s heavy hand does seem to explain two more troubling alterations.Orwell abominated Stalin and those who made excuses for his show trials and purges. These are the subject of some of his novel’s most powerful pages – which, not surprisingly, are weakly marked in the film. Yet he remained a committed socialist (“Nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country”) and harbored -which of us do not? – a soft spot for Leon Trotsky. If there is a tragic figure in “Animal Farm,” it is the old Bolshie’s standin: the warrior trotter, utopian orator, and prince of blueprints, Snowball. Only when the malefic boar Napoleon sics the dogs on Snowball, forcing him into exile, and his achievements are obliterated by slander, does the fable turn into a Gulag nightmare and the pigs into loathsome humans.In the film “Animal Farm,” a pig is a pig and you can hardly tell Snowball from Napoleon; they enter together with rude condescension and matching sneers. Snowball’s ouster and probable murder registers little feeling. His heroism in battle is glossed over and his speech is delivered with blustery self-importance, distorted by snorts and squeals. Napoleon’s speech, strangely enough, is rendered more properly English (Maurice Denham did all the voices other than Gordon Heath’s narration – an impressive feat.) Clearly the filmmakers could not bear to depict Snowball as a martyr, let alone as a leader among pigs. They do, however, underscore the Russia-centricity of the fable with a second transformation. Orwell’s anthem, “Beasts of England,” which he describes as a melodic fusion of “Clementine” and “La Cucaracha,” is replaced by a wordless variation on “The Internationale” – sort of an “Animationale,” with quacking and bleating, effective in its own right, though “Beasts” would have been funnier and more international.For all that, and in spite of a dreary narration that supplants Orwell’s prose and dialogue, “Animal Farm” retains much of the book’s power thanks to inventive animation and a sharp pace. The most memorable images are bleak and ominous, often involving shadows and overhead shots, and the few attempts at humor suggest a woebegone whistling in the dark. If Napoleon’s ferocity is softened, the addition of barbed wire fences and a portrayal of humans even more pitiless than in the novel help balance accounts. The film’s ending – complete with a reprise of the “Animationale” – is more radicalizing than Orwell’s, probably not the CIA’s intention.***For a steadier mixture of laughs and anarchy, we can thank another Leon, the penurious and humorless head of Warner Brothers’ cartoon division. Leon Schlesinger initially wanted to follow the Disney lead, but instead he hired a group of ingenious animators and writers – among them Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones – and gave them permission to break the mold. As censors curbed the sexy surrealism of the Fleischer Studios (Betty Boop, Koko, Popeye) and Walt Disney suburbanized his transgressive mouse, Warner’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies leapt into the ring with a cast of immortals – Bugs, Porky, Daffy, Elmer – their respective species known to all.“Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two” offers 60 cartoons – most in eye-popping prints – plus many commentaries, featurettes, and other bonuses (though not “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub,” the first Looney Tune, dropped after the package promising it was printed), and is an even more impressive selection than its predecessor. Warner is still chary with its black-and-white cartoons (who do they think will invest in these elaborate boxes if not the very fanatics who want *them* most of all?) and shows no sign of breaching the political correctness that proffers amnesia as a cure for history. In this regard, Disney remains the main villain for suppressing the mostly marvelous “Song of the South.”We get a generous portion of Bugs and the relentless theme-and-variation chases of Sylvester and Tweety (the latter foils the former) and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner (the former foils himself). But the real treat is the assortment of anomalies, including “The Dover Boys,” “Porky in Wackyland,” and the entire fourth disc, which combines caricatures of famous books (“Have You Got Any Castles?” is introduced by a parody of the now forgotten Alexander Woollcott), Hollywood stars, crooners (“I Love to Singa,” featuring Owl Jolson, is an astute analysis of the incipient jazz culture), the white mainstreaming of jazz (Kay Kyser and Johnny Scat Davis are satirized in “Katnip Kollege”), the crossroads between cool jazz and R &B (“The Three Little Bops”), and irreverent slaps at the classics, including the Wagnerian “What’s Opera, Doc” and the equally wondrous “Rhapsody Rabbit,” a take on the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 that cuts anything in “Fantasia.” When the animals do take over, this is what they’ll be watching.Mr. Giddins’s column appears alternate Tuesdays in The New York Sun.

The Two Leons

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