Back in December 1981, I previewed an up and coming feature-length cartoon from United Artists entitled The Secret of NIMH. The film's pre-publicity rumoured that at last animation was returning to the old Disney style of the thirties and forties. Having in recent years sat through such animated efforts as Allegro Non Troppo, Watership Down, The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, Heavy Metal and The Fox and the Hound, I was rather doubtful about whether these rumours were true.
What a treat, then, to witness The Secret of NIMH. It is everything that was promised and a lot more besides. With the exception of Richard Williams--whom I firmly believe to be one of the most talented animators around today--Walt Disney has finally been resurrected in the guise of three men, Don Bluth, John Pomerooy and Gary Goldman. The Secret of NIMH is flawless--yes, flawless!
Though I've always had a very critical attitude towards contemporary animation, I was certainly surprised and delighted with every aspect of the film, from its stunning visuals, to the characer voices and the story. If the advance word on Steven Spielberg's E.T. is true that it's a Disney film that Disney should have made, then The Secret of NIMH is an animated feature that Disney should be making now.
Of course, it is no closely guarded secret that Bluth, Pomeroy and Goldman are the splinter group who broke away from the Disney studios in 1979, forming their own company. These three talented artists were in a privileged position to learn their craft, firsthand, at the most sophisticated animation studio in the world. At the same time they absorbed everything they learnt and built upon that knowledge till even the impressive climax of The Fox and the Hound pales in comparison with what takes place during the first fifteen minutes of NIMH.
If the gap that exist between quality animation and Bakshi's Lord of the Rings is already a wide one, then The Secret of NIMH only helps to further it. It would of course be possible to go into great detail about the various special processes involved in the production of The Secret of NIMH but there isn't room in this review for that. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that another of Disney's animation experts Dors [sic] Lanpher, was responsible for most of the effects scenes. The multiplane techniques he adapted for the project include a pseudo-hologram and the use of backlit animation making every dewdrop sparkle or supernatural amulet glow with a brilliance never seen before in animated films since Fantasia. Short-cuts in the film include the photographing of three dimensional model sets and objects for transfer to animation and the xeroxing of individual cels although unlike the later Disney films the cels are linked [sic] by hand to eliminate the animators' original sketchy lines. These time-saving devices do not however incorporate the use of tv's limited animation techniques or total rotoscoping.
On many levels the film will also appeal to the more adult audience as the story has a fascinating twist in its tale with a superb Star Wars type conclusion. In recent years the closest to this was Martin Rosen's Watership Down. But in that case the animation although pleasing in certain scenes, suffered generally from a feeling of budget limitations.
What is more interesting is that the film's producers, Mel Griffin, Richard H. Irvine and James L. Stewart all originate from Walt Disney Productions. I can only add that the Disney studio was mad to let them go, and if it's also true that the reason Bluth and Co. left Disney was because of the studio suppressing of creative freedom then something is seriously wrong. All I can hope is, that it is a big enough success to encourage United Artists to finance another animated feature in the near future.
The book, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH on which the film is based, has been a best seller since it first appeared in 1971 and won for its author Robert C. O'Brien the 1972 John Newberry Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American Literature for children.
Another very important way in which The Secret of NIMH scores points over other recent animation fare lies in its use of character voices. Mrs Brisby (changed from Frisby for the film) is played by Elizabeth Hartman, Academy Award nominee for A Patch of Blue (1965) and her protrayal of the little mouse whose courage and perserverance makes her a challenging heroine is a delight. Her neighbor, Auntie Shrew whose voice is supplied by Hermoine Baddeley, is the perfect example ofthe busybody who means well but basically only manages to get in the way most of the time. Bluth and his artists have animated her at such tremendous pace that only repeated viewings of the film would totally define her character--a whirlwind cross between Mad Madame Mim in The Sword and the Stone and Cruella de Ville in the 101 Dalmations.
Jeremy the crow (Dom Deluise) is a marvellous personality. He is everything that Boomer and Dinky in The Fox and the Hound were not--clumsy, humourous and yet always sympathetic. Mr Ages (Arthur Malet) is the little mouse who is a chemist by profession operating amid coloured explosions from his secret lab hidden beneath a delapidated combine harvester. He is like the White Rabbit from Alice, continually on the move and always in control of the situation.
The omnipotent Owl who haunts an old tree deep in the forest is voiced magnificently by veteran screen actor John Carradine and with massive glowing eyes is certainly as frightening an apparition to Mrs Brisby as Tchernobog [sic] is to the audience in Fantasia's Night on Bare [sic]Mountain sequence. At one point he crushes a giant black spider beneath his claw whilst snapping a moth out of the air with his beak in a fashion that puts one in mind of Reitherman's Tyrannosaurus greedily lunging at fleeing archaeopteryx in The Rite of Spring.
Nicodemus whose unrecognisable voice is that of Derek Jacobi, relates the tale as the wizened super rat who helps Mrs Brisby to move her home and children to safety from the imminent fury of the farmer's tractor. In a heart-stopping scene it bears down on their tiny home like a huge mechanical dinosaur.
The villain of the piee is Jenner, voiced by Paul Shenar, who portrayed Orson Welles in ABC-tv's The Night that Panicked America. He is a rat with a long delicious grin, a sort of cross between the sly J. Worthington Foulfellow in Pinocchio and suave Basil Rathbone in Robin Hood as his sword fighting later proves.
The hero is Justin (Peter Strauss) the captain of the guard in the rat's headquarters. He is very much the athletic Errol Flynn character and is as entertainingly different from any other animal hero that you've ever seen. One of his guards is Brutus, a fierce terrifying creature armed with an electrode spear who chases Mrs Brisby in another of the film's breathtaking sequences.
The farmer and his wife who are totally unaware of the intelligent race of rats living beneath their rose bush are kept very much in the background, for obvious reasons, humans are difficult to animate convincingly and in this case are not entirely relevant to the story. It's the tractor and the sinister NIMH establishment that menace the little creatures. But the farmer's wife does own a cat called, and quite rightly so, Dragon, a ferocious beast in the style of Lucifer from Cinderella, yet ten times meaner.
Unlike the tv cartoon business, with 12,000 feet of film churned out every year, Bluth Productions have spent three years animating a mere 6,000 feet of film because of their dedication to screen realism in the animated form. The film also contains some of the most impressive backgrounds to grace a cartoon film since The Jungle Book.
NIMH also heralds a return to using the multiplane camera for scenes requiring depth, especially Nicodemus' magic hologram and in the opening sequence where with the aid of backlit animation, the wise old rat beckons magic vapours from an inkwell to grace the pages of an ancient book with fiery gold lettering.
There is only one song and it's dealt with quickly, efficiently and with the minimum of fuss, without holding up the story in any way. The rest ofthe music score composed by Jerry Goldsmith supplies just the right amount of suspense and mood to compliment the visuals. I can't recommend The Secret of NIMH more highly. It is the sort of animated feature that I've been awaiting for a long time for [sic] and I will certainly be going back for a repeat viewing.