FILM (1978)

Watership Down John Hurt, Richard Briers, Michael Graham Cox, Simon Cadell Director: Martin Rosen

For children raised in an era of all-action computer-generated movies with thrill-a-minute special effects, Watership Down might be confusing at first. But such is the craft that director Martin Rosen displays in bringing to life the characters, plot and intrigue of Richard Adams' epic children's story, only the truly inattentive watcher can still fail to be rapt.

The seemingly simple story of the fight for survival by a group of talking rabbits was heralded as a rich political allegory, in the traditions of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and George Orwell's Animal Farm, although the film probably works so well for young viewers because the author always insisted it was no such thing; just a story he had first told his daughters to entertain them.

Regardless, Rosen doesn't shy away from the bloody violence and themes of tyranny and heroism of Adams' book as he takes viewers on a journey with Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Pipkin, Violet and Silver. It's brutal at times. Thirty-three years after I first saw it as a boy the memory remains. A cinema outing was always exciting in those days, of course, but the mixture of feelings it stirred up was a strange experience. By turns scary, funny, triumphal and tragic, the political allegories may have been lost, but it was a movie that elicited the gamut of human emotions.

The plot is complex, although it is essentially an adventure story that takes us into the domain of a rabbit community led by Prince El-ahrairah. The rabbits' life is one of survival, using their cunning to outwit predators from hawks to cars and, one by one, several rabbits meet their doom. Fiver, a young runt, has a vision of the destruction of the warren where he lives with his brother Hazel. They set off through forests and across roads to find a new home in Watership Down. Their troubles are far from over though as they face deadly battles with the occupants of the neighbouring Efrafa warren run by the mad dictator General Woundwart.

In 1978, the British animation looked remarkably lifelike. It seems less so now we've been spoiled by computer-generated images. However, the characters remain alive, helped by the voices of a stable of respected British film and television actors, including John Hurt as Hazel. The movie's theme song, Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel, occupied the top slot on Britain's music charts for weeks, as Britons took it to heart. In 2004, Watership Down was named the 47th greatest British film of all time by Total Film magazine.