Halas & Batchelor Cartoons: An Animated History delves into the filmmakers' history beyond Animal Farm.

This beautifully illustrated volume is both a history and tribute to Britain's largest animation studio in the second half of the 20th century. Today, people in the U.S. may only be aware of Halas & Batchelor's feature-length version of Animal Farm (1954), but they made about 2000 shorts and TV commercials over a 45-year period (1940-1995). The book doesn't shy away from the fact that their films were made for a variety of reasons: as Cold War propaganda; as entertainment for kids (including some of the TV animation you may have watched growing up); as public information about a wide range of topics, including the Marshall Plan; as sponsored films to be shown in schools and at public meetings; as educational films for classroom use; and as entertaining shorts that contain poignant messages. An example of the latter is Automania 2000 (1963), described in the book as "Halas' bleak vision of a world overtaken by cars, warning against the ways in which humankind was being undermined by the growth of late industrial capitalism... This film was to win more awards than any other in the unit's history."

Unlike the major U.S. studios that specialized in turning out theatrical shorts -- and, later, TV series -- with recognizable cute and/or funny creatures, Halas & Batchelor's work was rich and varied in look and content. The look varied from film to film, depending on who designed it. They used many of the world's top illustrators and cartoonists and their soundtracks ranged from symphonic scores to the cool sounds of Kraftwerk in the pioneering computer-animated film Autobahn (1979).

No subject was taboo for Halas including sexual humor. Dream Doll (1979), a collaboration between Bob Godfry and Zlatko Ggric, is "a surreal fantasy about a man's infatuation for a blow-up sex toy, which has tragic-comic overtones." Birds, Bees and Storks (1965), which featured the voice of Peter Sellers as "an unctuously embarrassed father explaining sex to an invisible son," received a British Film Academy nomination and a special accreditation at Oberhausen.

Animal Farm
Creating an animated feature based on George Orwell's Animal Farm, a dark cynical satire, was probably the studio's boldest business decision. The film was neither a light comedy nor a film aimed at children. To do the film justice, the book provides two major accounts (by Roger Manvell and Vivian Halas) of the production's development; additionally, Richard Holliss does an excellent job of explaining the animation process by using storyboards, a tension chart, model sheets, background studies, and other elements from the film to illustrate how it was made.

Creating Animal Farm, a dark cynical satire, was probably the studio's boldest business decision. © The Halas & Batchelor Collection Limited. Courtesy of the Animation Research Centre Archive.

The book's discussion of Animal Farm also touches on the political issues surrounding the film's creation, including the CIA's clandestine channeling of funds to the production, of which Halas was unaware. More information about this disturbing aspect of the production is provided in two appendices, which contain extracts from Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm, a book by Dan Leab, and this author's article, Animated Propaganda During the Cold War.