Disney disciples

Four years ago, Don Bluth was being hailed at Disney as the crown prince of the studio's animation department. Having entered the unit's training programme in 1971 and risen faster than any of his peers, Bluth was recognised as a leader to whom the torch would be passed by the retiring Snow White generation. But in September 1979, Bluth resigned from Disney, taking many of the brightest young artists with him. The exodus delayed production of the animated feature The Fox and the Hound by six months, and dealt a blow to the studio's efforts to replace its old guard.

It was the biggest upheaval in the Disney cartoon factory since the bitter animators' strike of 1941, but this one was underscored by an interesting irony. The tirelessly driven Bluth and his friends were not avant-gardists bent on subverting the studio's artistic traditions. On the contrary, they quit because the new Disney was for them not Disneyish enough. Bluth's dream was to bring back the Snow White and Pinocchio era. He wanted the studio to produce animated features in the expensive and labour-intensive style in which every scene shimmered with detailed movement. He wanted to leave behind the light comedy of The Aristocats and The Jungle Book and return to stories that contained raw danger and tragedy.

The former Disney artists set up Don Bluth Productions and began work on a film which they hope will lookas though it came out of the Disney studios of 1940. The Secret of NIMH is based on a bestselling American children's book with mystical overtones reminiscent of Watership Down. The efforts of a widowed mouse to move her family home from the path of a farmer's plough lead to a fateful contact with a race of rats of advanced intelligence.

Featuring the voices of Elizabeth Hartman, Hermione Baddeley, Dom DeLuise and Derek Jacobi, The Secret of NIMH will be released in the United States this summer by MGM-United Artists. Whether or not it will look as if it was made in 1940, NIMH will probably reverberate with the zeal of its creators. Bluth, a former Mormon missionary in Argentina, regularly screens the old Disney classics for his 70-odd animators and other artisans. 'We're trying to make sure that what Disney left us is not lost and maybe develop it a little further.' Bluth said. 'But before this, we have at least to catch up to where he was.'

Every step is being taken on The Secret of NIMH to avoid the graphic look that crept into animation, including Disney's in the 1960s. The background artists use special brushes to create a soft look without hard edges. And Bluth will cut no stylistic corners. When an animal steps on a fallen branch, it will give way with a crunch. The characters will cast shadows. Bluth is even bringing back the multi-plane camera, a Disney invention of the 30s, that gave flat animation a live-action depth by arranging different parts of a scene on glass plates set at staggered levels. The technique takes so much planning, time and trouble that it has rarely been used at Disney in the last twenty years.

Other animators may charge Bluth with obsession for an anachronistic style. But for an animator whose priority is telling a story, Bluth claims he is using the best style to reach his end. 'To let the audence become involved, they must be able to forget that what they are seeing is drawn. The technique is not important in itself, but it is crucial to keep the brush strokes invisible to the audience.'

Bluth began learning the style from its originators. After a year of college and with no formal art training, he worked for two years at Disney, part of the vast army emplyed on Sleeping Beauty, the 1959 release whose commercial failure signaled the end of the studio's lavish animated features. Before returning to Disney full-time, Bluth's pursuits included the Mormon mission, running a musical comedy theatre group in Los Angeles with his brother, and working as a layout artist at a company making TV cartoons.

At Disney, Bluth soon attained the rank of animator. He became a directing animator on The Rescuers and sole director of the animated sequences in Pete's Dragon, both released in 1977. The Disney brass then gave Bluth his own short film to both produce and direct. The Small One was a sentimental little story about a boy in the Middle East of the Roman Empire who must sell his pet donkey. The tale ends with the animal bearing Mary to Bethlehem. It attracted little critical notice, probably because it was released during Christmas 1978 with a reissue of Pinocchio. Although Variety noted: 'Any concerns about the continuation of the Disney tradition of excellence can now be dismissed. The Small One measures up fully to the high standards.'

The Small One and another short that Bluth and his friends made on their own while at Disney, Banjo the Woodpile Cat which has been sold to American TV, were merely warm-ups for The Secret of NIMH. Banjo was made at nights at Bluth's home, and proved the possibility of making a 30-minute film outside the Disney umbrella. Whether NIMH will satisfy an American moviegoing public which still flocks to old Disney reissues remains to be seen. If it does, a stylistic devolution may be on the way.