Watership Down
Directed by Martin Rosen
Certificate PG
92 minutes
Released 25 October

Now fully restored in a new 4K restoration, this 1978 tale of rabbits on the run proved that an animated film need be neither made by Disney nor sugar-coated for children. Watership Down, although a children’s film, came from the producer of the Oscar-winning DH Lawrence adaptation Women in Love (1969), Martin Rosen. He ended up directing it too.

A prologue details the relationship between the creator-god Frith – represented as the sun – and rabbitkind. As with most creation myths outside the Judeo-Christian, there’s quite a bit of sex and violence. The rabbits breed furiously; hitherto non-carnivorous animals are given teeth to keep the rabbit numbers down. The rabbits are given powerful hind legs to outrun their predators.

Having established rabbits as intelligent creatures possessing a mythology and a world view, the main story concerns a specific rabbit community. The young rabbit Fiver (voiced by Richard Briers) has a premonition of imminent disaster at their warren. The older Hazel (voiced by John Hurt) knows Fiver to have been right about such things before, and attempts to warn the warren leader, who won’t listen.

So Hazel, Fiver, the chief’s assistant Bigwig and others set out to find somewhere safer. They have a run-in with the warren’s chief of police, and leave him for dead. Traversing woodlands and open countryside towards their destination, they encounter numerous perils, some of them fatal. Snares set to catch them. Hawks, owls, cats and dogs. Also, other rabbit communities, including a militaristic, totalitarian state.

Eventually, they will arrive at the safe haven of Watership Down and befriend an injured seagull. Hazel will meet the Black Rabbit of Death, as all rabbits must, and go on the journey from which there is no return.

All this takes a very different tack from the sentimentalised, anthropomorphised animal tales for which Disney was known. These rabbits talk like humans and are essentially characters in a dark and often violent drama – nature red in tooth and claw, if you will. Although many bad things happen to them, a morality underpins the whole as they attempt to find a better world without lording it over any of their fellow creatures.

Jeremy Clarke is a film critic. His website is jeremycprocessing.com