Bambi (film)

• Release Date: 1942
• Director(s): David Hand
• Writer(s): Perce Pearce
• Book / Story Film Based On: Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Felix Salten

Bambi was Walt Disney Productions’ fifth full-length animated feature film. It was based on Bambi, a Life in the Woods written by an Austrian author named Felix Salten. In the book, Bambi and his parents are roe deer, which Disney changed to white-tailed deer to make the animals familiar to American audiences.

Interestingly, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had earlier purchased the rights to the book with the thought of making a live-action movie. Once that studio decided making a movie involving deer as the main characters would be too difficult, Disney bought the rights and planned to make Bambi his second animated feature after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However, he ran into two obstacles. First, the story was considered too harshly realistic—the hero-fawn’s mother dies violently at the hands of a hunter—which was nothing like the lighter material for which the studio was known. Second, even Disney’s outstanding animators were having difficulty animating realistic deer. In the end, a small zoo was assembled at the Disney lot that included fawns and other featured animals as guides for the artists. In addition, Bambi’s mother dies off-screen, and Man is never shown.

The film was released as World War II raged, and it was not an immediate success. However, it was re-released to theaters six times beginning in 1947 and has been available for home video since 1989. Since 1947 it has been a huge financial success for the studio. Even though Bambi was not well received in 1942, it has come to be considered a classic and many aspects of the film are lauded. For example, even though the villain Man is never seen, the American Film Institute names him "villain number twenty" on its list of "Heroes and Villains."

Plot

A fawn named Bambi is the child of a doe and the stag known as the Great Prince of the Forest, who is the protector of the forest creatures. Bambi will one day inherit that title and the responsibility of guarding the other woodland creatures against hunters.

Like any princeling, advisors immediately befriend Bambi. The first is a rabbit named Thumper who helps teach the fawn how to walk and talk. Bambi’s relationship with his mother is very close, and she guides him through his early days as well. Soon he makes friends with a skunk named Flower and a female fawn named Faline. Bambi’s charming curiosity is mitigated by warnings about the dangers of forest life from his mother.

In Bambi’s first winter, one of Disney’s most delightful animated scenes occurs as the fawn slips and slides on ice. The winter also includes one of the studio’s most disturbing scenes, when Bambi’s mother is shot and killed by Man, a deer hunter. The Great Prince takes pity on his heartbroken young son and leads the fawn home.

Years later Bambi has grown into a handsome young stag. He and his young adult friends receive advice about love from Friend Owl, but they laugh it off. Soon, however, Thumper and Flower find romance. Then Bambi meets Faline again, who has grown into a beautiful young doe. Bambi is forced to defeat an older stag, Ronno, in order to lay claim to Faline’s affection. Soon thereafter Bambi awakes to the smell of smoke, and his father warns him of a wildfire.

They flee to safety, but Bambi becomes separated from Faline. He searches for her, finally discovering her under threat from snarling hunting dogs. In a dramatic battle scene Bambi drives the dogs away, demonstrating his readiness to become the Great Prince of the Forest. He and his father lead Faline and the forest creatures to the safety of a riverbank.

The following spring, Faline gives birth to twin fawns. Bambi watches over her, standing proudly as the new guardian of the forest animals.

Significance

Bambi is one of Disney’s most memorable films. No one who sees it as a child forgets the horror of the death of Bambi’s mother. As a consequence, Time magazine included it among the "Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time." But beyond its considerable emotional impact, the movie is also noteworthy for its realistic animation that remains fresh more than seventy years after its release.

At its release, however, many viewed its realism negatively. Critics did not want a realistic story or non-fantastic animation from Disney. Hunters were enraged that the villain of the story is an off-screen hunter. Despite the mixed critical reception in 1942, however, Bambi was nominated for three Academy Awards (best sound, best song, and best original musical score). In 2008 the American Film Institute listed it as the third-best animated film of all time, based on polls of 1500 people in the movie industry. The Library of Congress added Bambi to the National Film Registry in 2011.

The film also spawned a sequel of sorts, Bambi II, which was released to video in 2006. It fills in the gap between the moment when Bambi is led away from his dead mother to the next scene, when he is a youthful stag. The "sequel" depicts the Great Prince of the Forest’s difficulties in raising the now-motherless Bambi, Bambi’s worries about his remote father’s love, and other modern responses to the sexism of the original film.

Bambi’s impact also extended well beyond the movie industry. Shortly after it came out in 1942, the movie’s characters were used in public service campaigns to prevent forest fires. But Bambi and the other characters were loaned to the government for a short time, which led to the creation of Smokey Bear as the anti-fire figurehead. However, footage from Bambi that includes the fawn and his mother was once again used in a fire-prevention campaign in 2006.

Awards and nominations

Nominated

• Academy Award (1942) Best Original Song
• Academy Award (1942) Best Sound Recording
• Academy Award (1942) Best Original Score (Drama or Comedy)

Bibliography

Bacher, Hans. Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation. Burlington: Focal Press, 2008. Electronic.

Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Vintage, 2007. Print.

Hahn, Don. The Alchemy of Animation: Making an Animated Film in the Modern Age. Glendale: Disney Editions, 2008. Print.

Johnston, Ollie and Frank Thomas. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. Glendale: Disney Editions, 1995. Print.

Johnston, Ollie and Frank Thomas. Walt Disney’s Bambi: The Story and the Film. New York: Stewart Tabori, 1990. Print.