Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Secret of NIMH
1982 · Don Bluth · The Secret of NIMH on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch for glowing, backlit effects: Nicodemus's eyes, the red amulet. (light)
Bluth's animators hand-paint light sources directly onto the cels, sparkles, fire, translucency, giving certain objects and characters an inner glow nothing else in the frame has.
Payoff: The glow marks what carries power in this world before a word of dialogue explains it.
Notice how low the camera sits in the rats' underground world. (camera)
Low angles and deep shadowed spaces make the rodent world feel cavernous while the human world above looms monstrously large.
Payoff: The framing puts you at the scale of a creature who is small and in danger.
Listen for the mechanical hum and clank under the rats' scenes. (sound)
Goldsmith's score and the sound design lean into menace and scale wherever Brisby is small in a dangerous, oversized world.
Payoff: The sound tells you this is a fantasy willing to frighten you, not a gentle bedtime story.
Watch how often Mrs. Brisby is framed small against something enormous. (staging)
Compositions repeatedly dwarf her against the farmhouse, the plow, the owl, forces built at a scale she cannot match.
Payoff: The staging keeps reminding you that her courage has nothing to do with size or strength.
Notice Jeremy the crow's fumbling, comic movement against everyone else's stillness. (performance)
Dom DeLuise voices Jeremy for broad comic relief while the rest of the cast, Hartman, Jacobi, Shenar, is pitched toward sincerity, not gags.
Payoff: The contrast keeps the film's darker fantasy from tipping into either grimness or cartoon silliness.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch how small Mrs. Brisby is kept in every frame. Her courage is not a matter of size.