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Broadcast without the interruption of commercial breaks - but with some
controversial cuts - during what was only Channel Four's third night on air,
this confrontational and harrowing detailing of the variety of ways in which
animals are abused generated extensive front-page news and feature stories in
the UK and overseas.
The Animals Film begins with a brilliantly edited montage of archive footage
that sets out what would become a hugely controversial agenda: how and why
modern and supposedly civilised societies exploit animals in the name of sport,
food, fur, science and entertainment. The film skilfully incorporates numerous
media images - of farming, pharmaceutical and other industry adverts and
slogans; a Felix the Cat cartoon; found materials; public information films -
and extensive and painstakingly researched interviews. These sequences expose
fur-loving and wilfully ignorant members of the public; belligerent American
farmers; scientists; animal rights campaigners; and an elderly advocate of
hunting desperately clinging to the traditions she feels it represents.
Much of the film's material is necessarily shocking and delivers, just as it
did in 1982, a visceral assault on the senses. Young chicks at a processing
plant are de-beaked so that they don't peck at each other; many of the
hatchlings perish from shock and their lifeless bodies are tossed to one side.
Dogcatchers in a wintry New York City use lassoes to round up terrified strays,
turned onto the streets as unwanted Christmas presents; they are transported in
tiny cages to almost certain doom. We learn of the myriad ways in which they may
be exterminated.
Many of the images were obtained clandestinely, at great risk to the
filmmakers. These include the hunting of a stag, whose entrails are finally torn
asunder by the hounds that have relentlessly pursued it, and the snatched,
grainy images of an unattended dog kept alive on a laboratory slab with all of
its internal organs exposed.
In a recent 'Director Statement', co-director Victor Schonfeld, who continues
to crusade on behalf of animals and activists as a journalist for The Guardian,
asserts that The Animals Film is more pertinent to today's world than when it
was first released. As accurate as it is dispiriting, this observation also
highlights the seismic influence of a work that acted as an inspiration to a new
and increasingly politicised generation of animal rights activists and which
should be viewed in times of complacency.
Jason Wood
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1. Opening montage (3:14)
