This is a movie we now know to be the true end of an era. With WW2 gathering steam and America joining in after Pearl Harbour, Disney wouldn’t be able to make another feature length film for nearly ten years. Of the five films he’d produced thus far, Bambi would be his most unique. This one somehow had to combine the technique of Snow White and Pinocchio, the experimentation of Fantasia and the naturalism of Dumbo. Plus this would be the first Disney film to feature an entire cast of animals, which, as previously mentioned, was a scary concept for the team.
Walt bought the rights to the book Bambi, A Life In The Woods by Felix Salten, it seems, shortly before Snow White premiered in 1937, but he was only able to do that because MGM was trying and failing to get their own adaptation off the ground and, after seeing Snow White, conceded that an animated film would be the best way to do this book justice. But Disney ran into some problems adapting the book, too because, like Pinocchio, the book is far darker than the film ended up being. For example, there is a scene in the novel when Bambi is shot by a hunter and almost bleeds out.
It wouldn’t be until August 1939 that production and writing on Bambi really started; with the animators trying to properly bring animals to life, and the writers trying to adapt the novel into something that better befit Disney’s image. So, lead by Perce Pierce, the writing team expanded on Bambi’s relationship with his mother, they introduced Thumper & Flower, the two comical sidekicks and focused more on a burgeoning love story between him and Faline.
At barely over 1000 words of dialogue, the film still has the least dialogue of any Disney film to this day and, in a first and only situation of its kind in Disney history, none of the songs were sung by any character onscreen. The animation process was still the most arduous task because, though they had tried animating deer and other forest animals in the past, these were not what you’d call authentic. So the guys spent three years studing deer and the LA zoo, plus Walt created another small zoo in the studio, with rabbits, ducks, skunks, owls AND a pair of fawns, appropriately named after their counterparts in the film. While these designs certainly looked real, Old Man Marc Davis finalised Bambi by taking the original drawings and exaggerating him into a more child like creation with bigger eyes, a shorter snout and gangly legs.
Then the production team went to the forests of Maine and Vermont for the EXQUISITE backgrounds we now all know and love; helmed by art director Tyrus Wong, who was promoted to that post after he showed Walt some of his impressionistic paintings of forests. Which proved to be groundbreaking in the end result, because there was higher detail in the centre and less around the corners. So the audience’s attention is more drawn to the characters.
THE PLOT
The film is basically just the chronicled life of a deer. His birth, his first encounter with that most naive and dangerous of all animals, his growing up, etc. And really, that’s enough. Like Dumbo, a very simple story, but no less powerful. And of course, one cannot speak of this story without mentioning arguably the most DEVASTATING and emotionally resonant scene in any Disney film: the shooting of Bambi’s mother. Despite the gorgeous animation and endearing cast of animal characters, that scene is still what everyone remembers about this film.
Now, granted, it didn’t fully hit me quite as hard when I first saw it, because I was quite young at the time, I didn’t really understand that kind of concept, but looking back on it these odd 25 years, I’m very impressed that Disney had the courage to do it. And to make such a thing the staple of Disney’s animated films, which continues to this day. And the alarming thing is that the scene itself was toned down from how it was originally planned, but Walt didn’t want to traumatise the young audience too much, so Larry Morney rewrote it to occur offscreen and all we get is Bambi’s father saying “your mother can’t be with you anymore”. Simple, but powerful.
Bambi was also the first movie with its kind of social message. Shining a light on the destructive nature of man and his impact on ecology and the structure of the animal world. Which, as I understand it, is why the hunting world denounced the film, because we don’t like looking in mirrors, apparently. This film also introduces to children the idea that grief from loss will eventually heal, which is an excellent lesson, as long as you give your kids a little bit of time to process first.
MY VERDICT
As you may have guessed, this movie, out of all the earliest ones, the so-called “Golden Age”, is the onethat I think the best animation. The guys spent a lot of time trying to realistically draw woodland animals, and it shows. This film looks FANTASTIC. Plus, the music is perfect, the songs are great and the dialogue, while used sparingly, is very good and very realistic.
Is Bambi a Disney Classic? Once again, it wasn’t cherished at the time but today it has definitely earned its place as a classic. It was the final film Walt made before taking a well deserved break. And it was a swansong for a moment in cinematic history that has never yet been repeated.
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