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Babe (film)

1995 film directed by Chris Noonan

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ720724 ↗
Source-derived summary

Babe is a 1995 comedy-drama film directed by Chris Noonan, who co-wrote it with George Miller. It is an adaptation of Dick King-Smith's 1983 novel The Sheep-Pig, which tells the story of a farm pig who wants to do the work of a sheepdog. The film is narrated by Roscoe Lee Browne and the main animal characters are played by both real animals and animatronic puppets.

Babe was filmed in Robertson, New South Wales, Australia, in 1994 and released theatrically by Universal Pictures in the United States and Canada on 4 August 1995, with United International Pictures releasing in other territories, going on to become a critical and commercial success with seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture.

A sequel, Babe: Pig in the City, was released in 1998, with most of the starring actors reprising their roles. However, it did not perform as well commercially or critically as the original.

Plot

Following his usage in a "guess the weight" contest at an agricultural show, orphaned piglet Babe is brought home to the farm of the contest winner, Arthur Hoggett. There, he is taken in by Border Collie Fly, her irascible husband Rex and their puppies and befriends a duck named Ferdinand, who wakes people by crowing like a rooster every morning so he will be considered useful and be spared from being eaten.

Dismayed when the Hoggetts buy an alarm clock, Ferdinand persuades Babe to help him get rid of it. In doing so, they wake Duchess, the Hoggetts' cat, and wreck the house in the ensuing chaos.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Babe (film)” as 1995 film directed by Chris Noonan. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Babe, film and directed.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1995, 1983, 1994, 1998—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1995-01-01, 1995-12-07—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Babe, film and directed providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Babe (film)”, the useful work is to connect “1995 film directed by Chris Noonan” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q720724. VIAF identifies the subject as 180440018. The Library of Congress control number is no96046631. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 1983, 1994 and 1998.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Babe (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Babe (film) primary sources, Babe (film) archive and Babe research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Babe (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.