The Secret of NIMH

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
The Secret Of NIMH

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Don Bluth
Produced by Don Bluth
Gary Goldman
John Pomeroy
Written by Don Bluth,
Robert C. O'Brien,
Will Finn,
Gary Goldman,
John Pomeroy
Starring Elizabeth Hartman
Derek Jacobi
Dom DeLuise
John Carradine
Arthur Malet
Hermione Baddeley
Peter Strauss
Paul Shenar
Shannen Doherty
Wil Wheaton
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Studio Aurora Productions
Don Bluth Productions
United Artists
Distributed by MGM/UA Entertainment Co. (theatrical)
20th Century Fox (2007 DVD release)
Release date(s) July 2, 1982 (USA)
October 22, 1982 (Brazil)
Running time 82 min.
Country  United States
Language English
Budget US$7 million
Gross revenue US$14,665,733
Followed by The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue

The Secret of NIMH (alternatively spelled "The Secret of N.I.M.H.") is a 1982 animated film adaptation of the Newbery Medal-winning book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Mrs. Frisby's name is changed to "Brisby" in the film due to trademark concerns with Frisbee discs), written by author Robert C. O'Brien. The title of the movie was later used for newer editions of the book. It was directed by Don Bluth, produced by Aurora Pictures, and released by United Artists, in the summer of 1982.

Contents

[edit] Plot

An old rat named Nicodemus writes in a journal about his friend Johnathan Brisby, who has been killed that day while helping with "the plan". As he holds onto an amulet, he wonders to himself how to help Johnathan's widow, who knows nothing of her husband's association with this rat, or their experience of "NIMH" four years earlier. He then puts the amulet away and says goodbye to his friend.

Elsewhere, Mrs. Brisby, a shy and timid field mouse, lives in a cinder block with her children on the Fitzgibbons' farm. She is preparing to move her family out of the field they live in as plowing time approaches; however, her son Timothy has fallen ill. She visits Mr. Ages, another mouse and old friend of her late husband, who diagnoses her son with pneumonia, and provides her with some medicine from his strange laboratory. Mr. Ages warns her that Timothy cannot go outside for at least three weeks or he will die. On her way back home she encounters Jeremy, a clumsy but compassionate crow. After she frees him from the string he was entangled in, Dragon, the farmer's cat, appears and chases them away. Mrs. Brisby loses the medicine during the chase, but Jeremy is revealed to have picked it up. The next day spring plowing begins, and though Mrs. Brisby is able to stop the tractor, she knows she must come up with another plan. With the help of Jeremy she visits the Great Owl, a wise creature living in the nearby woods, to ask for help. He initially advises her to move her family regardless of risk, but after discovering she is Jonathan Brisby's widow, he tells her to visit a mysterious group of rats who live beneath a rose bush on the farm and ask for Nicodemus.

Upon visiting the rose bush, Mrs. Brisby is chased away by a large rat called Brutus with his electric spear. She then meets Mr. Ages, who has somehow broken his leg. He is amazed that she has survived from the visit from the owl, and leads her past Brutus to the rats' home, where she is amazed to see their use of electricity and other human technology. She meets Nicodemus, the wise and mystical leader of the rats, and Justin, an extremely kind and friendly rat who is the Captain of the Guards. She learns that her late husband, along with the rats, was a part of a series of experiments at a place known as NIMH (which stands for the National Institute of Mental Health).

Nicodemus explains to Mrs. Brisby how mice and rats were captured and tortured. Injections performed on the mice and rats had boosted their intelligence, allowing them to learn to read and to understand things such as complex mechanics and electricity. The experiments also prolonged their lifespan, which is why Jonathan never told his wife, as she would have aged and died far faster than he. The rats, along with Mr. Ages and Jonathan Brisby, escaped from NIMH and came to live on the Fitzgibbon farm. The rats created a home for themselves under Mrs. Fitzgibbon's rose bush, creating an elaborate habitation of beautiful chambers, elevators, and Christmas lights. However, the rats are unhappy (on a number of levels) in their dependence on the humans, from whom they are stealing electricity, and have concocted "The Plan", which is to leave the farm and live independently. Nicodemus then presents Mrs. Brisby with the amulet.

Because of her husband's prior relationship with the rats, they agree to help Mrs. Brisby move her home out of the path of the plow. However, Jenner and his hesitant accomplice Sullivan, who wish to remain in the rose bush, plot to kill Nicodemus during the move. Mrs. Brisby is told by Justin that someone must drug the Fitzgibbon's cat, Dragon, so that they can complete the move safely. But only mice are small enough to fit through the mouse hole leading to the house, and Jonathan was killed by Dragon while trying. Mrs. Brisby volunteers as a means of repaying them.

Later that night, she successfully puts the drug into the cat's food dish, however the Fitzgibbon's son Billy catches her and convinces his mother to let him keep her as a pet. While trapped in a birdcage, she overhears a telephone conversation between Mr. Fitzgibbon and NIMH and learns that NIMH intends to come to the farm to exterminate the rats the next day. She manages to escape from the cage and runs off to warn Justin.

Meanwhile, the rats are completing the move during a thunderstorm. Just as the Brisby house is over Nicodemus, Jenner cuts the pulley ropes, expecting the house to fall and crush Nicodemus. However, Sullivan reneges on his part of the plan, causing the house to land elsewhere. Despite this, Nicodemus is instead crushed under flying pulleys and ropes. Everyone still assumes that it was an accident and Jenner tries to assert himself as the new leader, trying to convince them to return to the rosebush and abandon the plans to migrate. Mrs. Brisby arrives and, though saddened to hear of Nicodemus' death and worried for her children, tries equally hard to convince the rats that NIMH is coming and that they must leave immediately. Jenner becomes angry and knocks her down. Justin rushes to Mrs. Brisby's aid, and a sword fight between him and Jenner ensues, which ends with Sullivan, himself mortally wounded, killing Jenner and saving Justin's life.

Mrs. Brisby suddenly hears the cries of her children from inside the house and realizes that the house is sinking in the mud it landed in. Despite the best efforts of the rats, they are unable to pull it from the mud. However, Mrs. Brisby's will to save her children somehow gives power to the amulet, which she uses to lift the house out of the mud and move it to safety from the plow. The considerable effort causes her to pass out shortly afterward.

The next morning, the rats have already gone to Thorn Valley with Justin as their new leader and Timothy has begun to recover. Jeremy also finds "Miss Right", an equally clumsy crow, and the two fly away together.

[edit] Cast

  • Hatmans final role before her retirment from acting, and eventual suicide.

[edit] Production

Mrs. Brisby meets Nicodemus. Backlighting techniques are used in this scene to give Nicodemus's eyes a bright glow.

The Secret of NIMH was the first feature film to be directed by Don Bluth. In September 1979 he, fellow animators Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, and eight other animation staff left Walt Disney Productions animation department to set up their own independent studio, Don Bluth Productions. The studio worked at first out of Bluth's house and garage, but moved to a two-story, 5,500-square-foot (510 m2) facility in Studio City several months later. After completing work on several shorter projects, including a two-minute animated sequence for the film Xanadu, the studio forged a deal with Aurora Productions, a film-making partnership established by former Disney executives.[1]

The rights to the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH had reportedly been offered to Disney in 1972 but turned down.[2] At Bluth, Goldman and Pomeroy's request, Aurora Productions acquired the film rights, and offered Don Bluth Productions a budget of US$ 5.7 million and 30 months to complete the film, tighter in both budget and schedule than most Disney animated features at the time. The studio set out with the explicit goal in mind of returning feature animation to its “golden era”, concentrating on strong characters and story, and experimenting with unusual and often more labor-intensive animation techniques.[3] Bluth believed older techniques were being abandoned in favor of lower production costs, and the only way animation could survive was to continue traditional production methods. Among the techniques experimented with on The Secret of NIMH were multiple passes on the camera to achieve transparent shadows, and backlit animation (where animated mattes are shot with light shining through color gels to produce glowing, areas for artificial light and fire effects), multiple color palettes for characters to fit in different lighting situations, from daylight, to night, to warm environments to underwater. Mrs Brisby had 46 different lighting situations, therefore there were 46 different color palettes, or lists of color, for her. Two modern, computerized versions of the multiplane camera were also manufactured for this production.[4]

To achieve the film's detailed full animation while keeping to the tight budget, the studio strove to keep any waste of time and resources to a minimum. The crew often worked long hours with no immediate financial reward (though they were offered a cut of the film's profits, a practice common for producers, directors and stars of live action films but never before offered to artists on an animated feature); producer Gary Goldman recalled working 110 hour weeks during the final six months of production.[2] Around 100 in-house staff worked on the film, with the labor-intensive cel painting farmed out to 45 people working from home.[5] Many minor roles, including incidental and crowd voice work, were filled in by the in-house staff. The final cost of the film was US$ 6.385M. The producers, Bluth, Goldman, Pomeroy and the executive producers at Aurora mortgaged their homes collectively for $700,000 to complete the film, with an agreement that their investment would be the first money to be repaid.

During the film's production, Aurora contacted Wham-O, the manufacturers of Frisbee flying discs, with concerns about possible trademark infringements if the "Mrs. Frisby" name in O'Brien's original book was used in the movie. Wham-O rejected Aurora's request for waiver to use the same-sounding name to their "Frisbee", in the movie. Aurora informed Bluth & company that Mrs. Frisby's name would have to be altered. By then, the voice work had already been recorded for the film, so the name change to "Mrs. Brisby" necessitated a combination of re-recording some lines and, because John Carradine was unavailable for further recordings, careful sound editing had to be performed, taking the "B" sound of another word from Carradine's recorded lines, and replace the "F" sound with the "B" sound, altering the name from "Frisby" to "Brisby".[2]

[edit] Release

[edit] Home media

The Secret of NIMH was also released to home video. It was released in Brazil on VHS for the first time on January 11, 1994 from Abril Vídeo.

It saw a DVD release for the first time on November 17th, 1998.

In 2007, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman oversaw a high-definition restoration of the film which was released on June 19, 2007 in a 2- disc DVD and Blu-ray Disc set under the "Family Fun Edition" label. Improvements in the transfer from the 1998 DVD and Blu-ray include some color correction, and dirt and dust removal from the cells.[6]

[edit] Internet

In the last week of May, 2009, The Secret of NIMH was made available for viewing on Hulu, an internet-based, commercial supported, video on demand service.

[edit] Reception

The film garnered critical acclaim for being one of the most vibrantly animated films of its time and has earned a 94% "fresh" approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website.[7] Despite good reviews, the film only did moderately well at the box office, attributed to a combination of poor promotion, regionally-staggered release dates and competition from the Steven Spielberg blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.[8] There was some controversy over the perception that the film was perhaps too frightening and violent for most young children despite its MPAA "G" rating (the Walt Disney Company originally rejected this project because it was perceived to be "too dark" and complicated to be a financial hit).[citation needed]

Today the film is considered Don Bluth's masterpiece.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Beck, Jerry (October 2005). The Animated Movie Guide. Chicago Review Press. pp. 243–4. ISBN 1-556-52591-5. 
  2. ^ a b c Cawley, John (October 1991). "The Secret of N.I.M.H.". The Animated Films of Don Bluth. Image Pub of New York. ISBN 0-685-50334-8. http://www.cataroo.com/DBnimh.html. 
  3. ^ Counts, Kyle (February 1982). "Coming: The Secret of NIMH". Cinefantastique. http://www.vanden-eykel.com/nimharchive/articles/cfeb822.htm. 
  4. ^ Mandell, Paul (June 1982). "Interview with Dorse Lanpher". Fantastic Films. http://www.vanden-eykel.com/nimharchive/articles/ffmtext.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-30. 
  5. ^ McDaniel, Adam. "Remembering NIMH: An Interview with Don Bluth Studios". http://www.adammcdaniel.com/Don_Bluth_Interview.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-30. 
  6. ^ http://www.ultimatedisney.com/secretofnimh.html
  7. ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/secret_of_nimh/.
  8. ^ Beck, Jerry (1996-06-01). "Don Bluth Goes Independent". Animation World Magazine. http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=993. 

[edit] External links

Search Wikiquote Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Secret of NIMH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH"
Personal tools