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A Theory on the Ending that I Found Wouldn't Fly


(But before I start ... if one wants the original, book ending, just stop the film at the point where the donkey sees the pigs turning into the farmer. That is where the book ended, and all this movie's alterations seem to happen after that point.)

Okay. For a while I thought I had a great brainstorm that shed some light on what had happened to the movie ending.

First of all, Orwell had tried to make a good story out of the real history of the Soviet Union.

Then this film comes along, after Orwell's death, and is released in 1954.

What had happened in the meantime? In March of 1953, Stalin died. And there were rumors (that are still around) that he was assassinated, or at least had help in letting his naturally fatal condition go undetected until it was too late, because his own people were feeling threatened by Stalin's paranoia (see the Wikipedia article on Stalin).

So it would have been appropriate if the movie had updated the ending to show the more recent events.

For instance, Orwell's original message seemed to be "Oh, be careful as you revolt. Your new bosses can easily turn into your old bosses, only worse, and ... well, I don't know what to tell you about what to do about it."

But a good new message might be "You know, the bosses do die after a while, and heck YOU can try to throw them out if you don't like them. Other governments are willing to help."

* * * * *

But. I guess that won't fly. The film ending still makes more sense as attempt by the West to just take advantage of the situation. For one thing, it DID take a while for the dust to settle after Stalin died. For another, the Big Leader after Stalin was Nikita Kruschev, and while Stalin didn't look like a pig, Kruschev certainly did. (Not meaning to insult the man, but he was bald and no beard and had a bad weight problem, definitely easy to draw him as a pig.)

So the film is a bit of a prod. "You've got another chance now, keep an eye on the new guys. If it doesn't work out, you can yell for help like Benjamin here, and maybe throw the bums out."

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I like your interpretation and it works. I guess they were operating on showing a natural progression of the ending instead of showing an alteration

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