“As you follow the escapades or the journey of the hero through a story, it evokes some kind of emotion in the viewers. The director’s job is to make sure that the audience goes through the journey and has an emotional reaction.”
– Don Bluth
We’re already halfway through July, but there’s still a lot of great programming coming up to close out the month! The Final Cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now returns this weekend in all its grim, gritty glory as part of GutiFest, a special film series put together by guest programmer Gustavo Arellano. Down the line we’re also excited to present Talk to Me, a supernatural horror film directed by brothers Danny and Michael Philppou and distributed by A24. Then the month wraps up with a considerably lighter title, Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo, the next installment in our Ghibli Year series and presented in dubbed and subtitled screenings. We’re also playing another animated favorite next week as part of our Summer Matinee series, Don Bluth’s The Land Before Time. Set in the Mesozoic Era, the movie follows Littlefoot, a young Apotasaurus (or “longneck”, to use the film’s nomenclature) whose mother is killed while protecting him from a Tyrannosaurus rex. Devastated by this loss but encouraged by his mom in her last moments, he journeys with an unlikely group of friends to find the Great Valley, a safe, bountiful land where him and his fellow dinosaurs will be able to live their days in peace.
While it’s undeniably a family film, the movie stretches the concept to its very limit with its sad subject matter and violent moments. Indeed, throwing cute kid-friendly characters in serious, often dangerous stories and situations is something of a trademark for director Bluth. A former animator for Disney, Bluth worked on such projects as Robin Hood and The Rescuers before becoming disillusioned with what he perceived as the then-dismal state of animated cinema, feeling that the titles put out by his workplace and other studios lacked the magic of old classics like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Putting his money where his mouth was, he left Disney and made a string of features with the high quality animation and engaging narrative content that he felt was so lacking in other productions. Indeed, there is a distinctly dark bent to much of Bluth’s oeuvre that separates it from the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcakes of the time, with many who grew up in the 80s and 90s likely to have at least one traumatic core memory courtesy of him. Yet far from being wanton or inappropriate, this darkness serves to emotionally challenge viewers of all ages, making the experience of watching Bluth’s films not just entertaining but enriching as well.
I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t explain how Bluth’s movies challenge viewers, so it’s only fair that we revisit some of them. Tell Mickey to take a hike and roll out the red carpet for Fievel and Mrs. Brisby, because we’re looking at five of Don Bluth’s darkest films!
The Land Before Time (1988)
Bluth’s third feature film (and his second collaboration with executive producer Steven Spielberg), The Land Before Time was released the same day as Disney’s Oliver and Company. Though the latter ultimately ended up grossing more at the box office, Bluth’s film actually opened at number one during its opening weekend, no small feat considering the stranglehold the Mouse has long exercised on animation. On top of that, it inspired an extensive multi-media franchise that spanned toys, video games, and a whopping 13 straight-to-video sequels, with the last coming out in 2016, something that Oliver and Company – for all its own merits – did not. Of course, none of the many follow-ups live up to the singular achievement of the original, which, while aimed at children, boldly refuses to condescend to them or sugarcoat the sadness of its story. Instead, it tackles this sadness head on in order to impart on kids one of the most important lessons they can ever learn: how to handle the loss of a loved one.
Initially, Bluth and his collaborators envisioned the film as having no dialogue, a creative choice inspired by the similarly dinosaur-themed Rite of Spring sequence from Disney’s Fantasia (which I happen to have written about for another post). This shows in the film’s emphasis on imagery and atmosphere over dialogue, and indeed the latter sounds simple and often childish (as if it were an afterthought) considering the mature, tragic tone that otherwise pervades the film. This isn’t to say that the cast, made up primarily of child actors, turn in poor performances. If anything, Gabriel Damon’s performance as Littlefoot is sophisticated well beyond his years, bringing a general good-naturedness to the character while also capturing the doubt, frustration, and grief that he experiences over the course of the movie. Littlefoot and his friends’ journey is accompanied by narration from Pat Hingle (who Batman fans might remember as Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton films), with his gruff, gravelly voice serving as an effective counterpoint to the youthfulness of the main cast.
On the musical front, Titanic composer James Horner turns in what I’d go as far to say is one of the greatest scores in his two-time Academy Award-winning career. Brought to soulful life by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of King’s College, Horner’s music makes full use of the strings, brass, and singers at his disposal to communicate the powerfully emotional core at the heart of the film. A vocalizing choir suggests sorrow as Littlefoot struggles to come to terms with his mother’s death, blaring trumpets convey peril when him and his friends try to trick and defeat the T-rex (excuse me, the “Sharptooth”), and gliding violin strings indicate triumph when they finally reach the Great Valley. So stirring are Horner’s cues that they would be endlessly cannibalized in the equally endless sequels (when not crowded out by, well, less-than-stirring musical numbers), though their use is nowhere nearly as inspired as in this first film.
“Gabriel Damon’s performance as Littlefoot is sophisticated well beyond his years, bringing a general good-naturedness to the character while also capturing the doubt, frustration, and grief that he experiences over the course of the movie.”
Running a brisk 69 minutes, the movie originally ran longer but had over 10 minutes of footage cut due to concerns that it was, as Spielberg put it to Bluth, “too scary” for children. That’s interesting to hear considering some of the material that did make it into the finished film, namely the intense, fatal fight between Littlefoot’s mom and the Sharptooth (with one shot quickly but unmistakably showing the silhouetted form of the latter biting and breaking skin on the former’s back.) It’s true that the violence might be a bit much for more sensitive viewers, but it’s balanced out by the movie’s emotional content. Scenes like the young dinosaurs joining a lonely Littlefoot one by one as he sleeps, an encounter with an older, initially-grumpy dinosaur who softens and consoles the little longneck upon learning of his mother’s death and — most soul-crushing of all – Littlefoot happily running after his own shadow because he thinks it’s his mom have the power to move not in spite but because of the movie’s more disturbing moments, providing a tender contrast to the scary scenes.
As heartwarming as it is heartbreaking, The Land Before Time is an animated children’s adventure that refuses to be confined by the label and tackles serious issues like death and loss as well as any number of “grown-up” movies.
The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Bluth, however, had already established his predilection for darkly-inclined cartoons six years before with his first feature film. Adapted from Robert C.O. Brien’s children’s novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Secret of NIMH was not as massive a success as The Land Before Time but proved to be a surprise favorite among such critics as Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. This critical acclaim stemmed in large part from the surprisingly mature tack of the film: while the characters are cute and the art design recalls a classic Disney movie, there’s a decided edge to not just the story but the way it’s told as well. Revolving around the efforts of field mouse Mrs. Brisby to relocate her home and family to safety, the desperate mother is forced to seek the help of a group of rats whose intelligence has been increased to genius levels by horrific experiments conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (the titular NIMH). This set-up is a lot of things but it’s not Mickey Mouse, that’s for sure.
While the movie has a lot going for it on both a narrative and aesthetic level, I genuinely wonder if it would have been as successful without Elizabeth Hartman’s performance as Mrs. Brisby (tragically, her last film role before her suicide several years later.) There is a gentleness to her voice and she expresses worry, uncertainty, and fear all over the course of the film but somehow a quality of strength and determination emerges in her character, making her one of the most rounded and compelling heroines in animation. Comic relief is provided by Mel Brooks collaborator Dom DeLuise as the scatterbrained crow Jeremy, the first of a number of memorable appearances by DeLuise as side characters in Bluth’s films. A decidedly less funny bird – the imposing, glowing-eyed Great Owl – is played by celebrated character actor John Carradine, whose low, resonant voice is as pregnant with wisdom as potential menace.
Scored by the one and only Jerry Goldsmith (in his first stint as a composer for an animated movie) and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the music embraces the film’s dark sensibility. From the ambiguous, enchanting theme that opens the film to the fervidly climatic piece that underscores the battle between the rats and the effort to save Mrs. Brisby’s kids, there’s a shadowy timbre not always heard in music for children’s films. This isn’t to say that there aren’t light or happy pieces: “Flying Dreams”, the lullaby that accompanies Mrs. Brisby’s taking care of her sick son Timmy, appears throughout in instrumental form as a positive, hopeful theme. However, it is foreboding sounds like the grim brass and chanting heard as Mrs. Brisby enters the Great Owl’s lair as well as the unnerving woodwinds and swirling strings that accompany the experimentation done on the rats of NIMH that likely stick with viewers the most.
“I genuinely wonder if [The Secret of NIMH] would have been as successful without Elizabeth Hartman’s performance as Mrs. Brisby… There is a gentleness to her voice and she expresses worry, uncertainty, and fear all over the course of the film but somehow a quality of strength and determination emerges in her character, making her one of the most rounded and compelling heroines in animation.”
Indeed, it is the moments that Steven Spielberg might have deemed “too scary” had he been involved with this movie that it is most remembered for. Case in point is the aforementioned lab scene: we not only see the rats get injected with Lord knows what but them shriek and writhe in pain as a surreal, constantly-changing background illustrates the injected chemical acting upon them. Another especially tense scene is when Mrs. Brisby and Auntie Shrew try to stop the tractor from destroying the former’s home and killing the bed-ridden Timmy. On its own, it’s just a tractor plowing a field, hardly the stuff of nightmares. But with the uncannily-realistic rotoscope effect used to depict the tractor (clashing with the more traditional, cartoony look of the rest of the film), the frenzied cries and frantic expressions of the shrew as she tries to warn everyone of its arrival, and the ominous red-yellow sky that it all occurs under, it’s elevated to a nigh-apocalyptic event for Mrs. Brisby and her neighbors.
A serious story with a gloomy atmosphere and admirable heroine, The Secret of NIMH is a suitably sophisticated debut for one of animation’s most accomplished innovators.
An American Tail (1986)
Four years later, Bluth revisited the idiom of anthropomorphic mice for a somewhat different project. Teaming up with Steven Spielberg for the first time, the two expanded upon an idea originally conceived by producer David Kirschner to weave An American Tail. Set in the 1880s, Fievel Mouskewitz and his family are forced by the persistent threat of cats in their native Russia to flee for America because, as they believe, “there are no cats in America”. This wishful thought turns out to be just that however, and young Fievel ends up getting separated from his family during the dangerous journey. Addressing immigration and anti-Semitism through the metaphor of mice and cats, Spielberg drew from his own family history to help Bluth flesh out the story and characters (Fievel, for example, is named after Spielberg’s grandfather). The result is an authentic, affecting picture that touches on both the best and worst of this country’s past.
Once again, Bluth’s film is carried by the deeply convincing performances of the cast. Lead Phillip Glasser, then only 8 years old, is unexpectedly moving as Fievel, projecting childhood curiosity and innocence in a world that’s kind to neither without ever coming across as canned or saccharine. Another warm presence is Nehemiah Persoff (one of the gangsters from Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot) as Fievel’s Papa, voiced with a pronounced Yiddish accent but with such depth and personality that it comes across as fatherly and lovable rather than stereotyped or offensive. A familiar face (or rather, voice) returns in the person of Dom DeLuise, contributing comic relief yet again as yet another scatterbrained character, the vegetarian cat Tiger. With his character starting off as an enforcer (albeit an ineffective one) for bad guy Warren T. Rat, DeLuise is given a bit more to work with here as Tiger goes from minor baddie to friend of Fievel.
Originally set to be scored by Jerry Goldsmith, the music ended up being composed by James Horner, who had just come off of scoring Aliens that same year. Blending orchestral sections with folk instruments like balalaikas and accordions, Horner’s themes utilize a diversity of textures and rouse a wide palette of emotions, with one of the most momentous being the choral rendition of Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” heard when Fievel first sees the Statue of Liberty. This is to say nothing of the songs, with 80s and 90s babies likely to remember “Somewhere Out There” (particularly the Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram version heard during the credits) playing an integral part in the soundtrack of their childhood. While others like “Never Say Never” and “There Are No Cats in America” are guaranteed crowd-pleasers, Fievel and Tiger’s light duet (fitfully titled “A Duo”) is inexplicably underrated, with DeLuise and Glasser delivering a diverting, delightfully earnest performance about the power of newfound friendship.
“…Bluth’s film is carried by the deeply convincing performances of the cast. Lead Phillip Glasser, then only 8 years old, is unexpectedly moving as Fievel, projecting childhood curiosity and innocence in a world that’s kind to neither without ever coming across as canned or saccharine.”
Dealing as it does with migration to 19th century America, the film doesn’t flinch in its portrayal of the hardships that Fievel and his fellow immigrants face. In fact, the movie opens with a band of Cossack cats rampaging through the Mouskewitzes’ hometown, making it only the second animated film to my knowledge to open with a pogrom (the first being Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop, a decidedly more adult title that came out five years before). From there, we see Fievel and other children being forced to work in sweatshops and — while we never actually see the cats eat anybody — we get a few instances of them snatching up helpless mice with the clear understanding that they will. But similarly to The Land Before Time, the violence and terror are countered by the sweet moments, with the most beautiful almost certainly being the end when Fievel is finally reunited with his family: bathed in soft amber light, his parents and sister tearfully embrace him as Horner’s score swells victoriously in the background.
A searing fable about bigotry and the American Dream, An American Tail is the personal, profoundly thoughtful product of two great creators at the height of their powers.
All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
Following the landslide success of The Land Before Time, Bluth decided to revisit a project whose earliest inkling of an idea came to him after The Secret of NIMH. Based around the idea of a dog detective, the production team toyed and tinkered with the concept before finally coming up with All Dogs Go to Heaven. A fantasy in the mold of It’s a Wonderful Life, the movie follows con dog Charlie B. Barkin’s escape from Heaven and return to Earth, after being double-crossed and murdered by his partner in crime Carface, in order to seek revenge. On paper, it’s not exactly a family-friendly story even by the loose standards of Don Bluth films, but the grittiness of the narrative is softened by the classic, cartoony look of the characters and the world they live in. Ironically, it might even be the lightest in tone of all the movies discussed here.
In a stark departure from the female and child stars of the previous films, the lead role here is voiced by the one and only Burt Reynolds, considered about as manly as it got at the time. As Charlie, Reynolds lends a slick charisma to the wily German Shepherd that viewers can’t help but find charming. Supporting him is DeLuise (a real-life friend and past collaborator of Reynolds) as his best friend Itchy, once again providing comic relief while also demonstrating a little edge and even some dramatic range after Carface roughs him up pretty badly in a warning to Charlie. Caught in the crossfire of this criminal intrigue is little orphan Anne-Marie, voiced with impeccable innocence by child actress Judith Barsi (who also voiced Ducky in The Land Before Time) even as she expresses suspicion and anger over Charlie’s schemes. Tragically, this role would be Barsi’s last: during production, she was killed in a murder-suicide by her father, with the finished film being dedicated to her memory.
Matching the comparatively-lighter tone of the movie is Ralph Burns’ music score. A jazz pianist, Burns’ musical pedigree shows in the upbeat, brass-heavy arrangements heard throughout. While they aren’t as majestic as anything heard in American Tail or Land Before Time, the themes here fit the Mardi Gras-season New Orleans setting like a glove. The songs are similarly amusing: “You Can’t Keep A Good Dog Down” is an entertaining duet between Charlie and Itchy even with its politically incorrect moments and “Let’s Make Music Together”, sung by the big-lipped King Gator who’s about to eat Charlie before deciding he likes the sound of his voice, is so random yet catchy that you can’t help but like it. One of the more low-key yet intriguing songs though is “Let Me Be Surprised”, sung by Charlie and an angel dog in Heaven after he dies. Questioning the value of knowing everything versus the pleasure that comes with being surprised by the unknown, it’s a gently thought-provoking tune carried by Reynolds and singer Melba Moore’s dulcet tones and Burns’ soothing orchestration.
“As Charlie, Reynolds lends a slick charisma to the wily German Shepherd that viewers can’t help but find charming. Supporting him is DeLuise (a real-life friend and past collaborator of Reynolds) as his best friend Itchy, once again providing comic relief while also demonstrating a little edge and even some dramatic range…'”
Despite the plot being explicitly premised on the protagonist’s death, the movie leans on the laughs much more than any of Bluth’s preceding films. A great deal of the humor derives from the banter between Charlie and Itchy, with the decision to not only let the two record their lines together (as opposed to separate as is usually the case for voice actors) but to ad-lib also serving the dialogue well. But it wouldn’t be a Bluth movie without at least one thing to put the fear of God into young audience members. I’m referring, of course, to Charlie’s nightmare. Spawned by his fear that he has effectively turned his back to Heaven and thus can never go back, he dreams that he has been damned and sent to Hell, depicted as a lethal lava land populated by skeletal demons and a monstrous hellhound that may or not be Satan himself. It’s a rare instance of Hell in animation that’s not played for laughs, and it’s made even creepier by the same uncanny rotoscope effect Bluth used earlier for the tractor in The Secret of NIMH for the infernal, dragon-like vessel that Charlie finds himself on.
With its provocative premise and uniquely humorous approach, All Dogs Go to Heaven is a curious experiment by Bluth whose divine diversions and moments of pathos pay off in the end.
Anastasia (1997)
After All Dogs Go to Heaven, Bluth spent some time in the wilderness, so to speak. He continued to crank out movies like Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina, and The Pebble and the Penguin, but none matched the box office draw or critical acclaim of his earlier films. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that he struck gold again with Anastasia, produced by 20th Century Fox. Returning to the sunny environs of Russia, Bluth took inspiration from the old legend that Anastasia Romanova, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, somehow survived her family’s overthrow and their subsequent massacre by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks to craft a princess movie that easily rivals Disney’s best. This positive reception was shared by many when it came out, with the film raking in a whopping $143 million against a budget of $53 million and even Russian audiences warmly receiving the film despite its obvious historical liberties.
Headlining the cast is When Harry Met Sally’s Meg Ryan, with Bluth envisioning the role of Anya specifically for her. Indeed, after hearing the charming combination of grace and snark that Ryan imbues the amnesiac princess with, it’s hard to imagine anyone else pulling off the character. Playing opposite her is John Cusack as scam artist Dmitri, with Cusack’s roguish charm and wit being a perfect match for Ryan’s own. Wisely, both leads eschew the faux (and often-terrible) Russian accents so common in movies set in that country, allowing the actor’s performances to breathe without the distraction of poorly-executed accents. Someone who does resort to an accent, however, is Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown himself) as the real-life mystic (or charlatan, depending on who you ask) Rasputin, reimagined here as an undead sorcerer who is literally falling apart as the story unfolds. Thankfully though, Lloyd does his best to ham the role up for viewers, with the accent adding to the character’s goofy appeal rather than detracting from it.
Among the film’s many strengths, one of the biggest is the soundtrack, with two songs receiving Academy Award and/or Golden Globe nominations. The first, “Journey to the Past”, is an exhilarating declaration of purpose for Anya, sung by Broadway’s Liz Callaway in place of Ryan and supported by lush orchestration. The second, “Once Upon a December”, is a haunting ballad about Anya’s vague memories of life in the old Winter Palace, expressed with pained longing by Callaway and undergirded by a solemn waltz-like tempo. But Rasputin gets in a show-stopper of his own with “In the Dark of the Night”, a rollicking villain song that alternates between sinister with Jim Cummings’ (the voice of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too, filling in for Lloyd on song duty) raspy vocals and campy with the rock-style chorus that backs him up. David Newman’s score is also worthy of praise, with the opening theme heard during the prologue in particular evoking the grandeur of Anya’s royal upbringing as well as the wistfully melancholic tone of the movie itself.
“…after hearing the charming combination of grace and snark that Ryan imbues the amnesiac princess with, it’s hard to imagine anyone else pulling off the character. Playing opposite her is John Cusack as scam artist Dmitri, with Cusack’s roguish charm and wit being a perfect match for Ryan’s own.”
More a fairy tale than an accurate retelling of history, the film gets its fair share of scares thanks largely to Rasputin and his various schemes for revenge. Selling his soul for the power to instigate the Russian Revolution and kill the Romanovs, he sends hordes of flying green demons to derail the train Anya and her companions travel on and tries to lure her into jumping overboard from a ship by means of a pleasant yet slightly-off dream that turns nightmarish at the last second. However, there is a noticeable tonal shift in the second half of the movie when the characters reach Paris. The fantasy elements disappear for the most part, with the narrative unfolding like a straight drama as Anya tries to convince the Dowager Empress, her grandmother and only surviving family member, that she is her long-lost granddaughter. It says something about both the strength of the story and the quality of the animation that it remains compelling to watch even when it’s just characters talking and not ending off the forces of darkness or singing certified bops.
A return to form for Bluth after a difficult period, Anastasia is a gorgeously-animated triumph that blends history and fantasy to create a riveting whole.
The Land Before Time screens starting Monday, July 24th.
Monday, July 24 – 1pm, 3pm
Tuesday, July 25 – 1pm, 3pm
Wednesday, July 26 – 1pm, 3pm
Thursday, July 27 – 12:30pm
Tickets