To Your Health

What is alcohol anyway? This strikingly designed sponsored film is far more than a lecture from the World Health Organisation on alcoholism. In examining the history, science and social conventions of drinking it sidesteps demonisation to probe deeper into our relationship with booze. But it is the intoxicating designs of American artist Philip Stapp that really makes this film stand out. His able mix of cartooning, graphic design and expressionism is a tour de force.

Stapp’s work was brought to life by the British Halas & Batchelor studio, with whom he had also collaborated on their adaptation of Animal Farm (1954). It was his atmospheric storyboard breakdown that played a key part in getting the author George Orwell’s widow, Sonia Orwell, to have faith in the adaptation project. His unassuming but impactful career (before WWII he was an art teacher at a progressive Connecticut School where he taught future President George HW Bush) encompassed a range of both abstract and educational films. This film is a testament to his ability to merge the two to great effect.