George Orwell's 1945 satire 'Animal Farm' was made into a TV movie in 1999. Shot on location in Wicklow Mountains in Ireland, Hungarian producer Robert Halmi Sr revealed, "I lived with this book for more than 50 years...I was in Hungary during communist rule and surrounded by barbed wires and the so-called Iron Curtain and we completely were desolated. And you thought, 'Nobody knows about us. Nobody knows what communism is. Nobody knows what terror is.' And, all of a sudden, 'Animal Farm' was published and was smuggled into Hungary and it became my Bible. I left Hungary, took it with me and it took me 50 years to set it up...It took me 50 years to do this movie and it could not have been done until recently because we did not have the technology."
"If I’m a parent, I would love my children to watch it merely for pure political reasons," Robert reasoned, pointing out at the time, "And I know that if they cannot read the newspapers about Kosovo, they should listen to Napoleon and find out what it is." Patrick Stewart gave voice to Napoleon in the movie.
"For me, the most important thing – almost religiously – has been to do this book," Robert confessed. He also acknowledged, "In America, this is probably over the heads of most people...All my shows are fantasies and dreams, and I have to raise the bar a little bit with every project."
"I started my career as a photographer," Robert recounted. "I thought I would just do a photography book with animals and it would be subtitled. And then I thought, you know, I’m going to do some kind of a documentary. It was always with me. And everything came together (in 1997) – this thing took 2 years to film, by the way."
Robert insisted re-telling George Orwell's story was "extremely important. It's important for us to understand when we fight for something or send our troops somewhere nowadays, why we do it. This is an international virus. It can go anywhere."
On reflection, "Of course, this is not for young children but older kids - many of whom read the book in school - could have Orwell's text opened up to them by the telefilm. This wasn't made for small children. And I think if I were given that choice, I would probably want to talk to a child a little bit about what they were going to see. But compare it with so much that is available to small children to see, and there is no offense in 'Animal Farm.'"
