Bambi (1942)

Today, we have Disney’s first feature length Public Service Announcement, Bambi. This is considered a true Disney classic, but like Dumbo, I’ll admit that I haven’t seen this since I was a child. I remembered even less of it than Dumbo. All I knew was that there were deer, a rabbit named Thumper and (spoiler) Bambi’s mom dies. Overall, I would say that this was a good movie. It also pushed the animation ability of Disney forward.

Original Poster Source via IMDB

Summary: This movie, much like Dumbo, starts with the birth of it’s titular character. As a young deer, he goes about learning about life in the forest. His mother dies, he falls in love and fights for his girl. Some hunters come and accidentally set the forest on fire. Bambi has to protect his love.

It was actually really difficult for me to come up with that summary. Bambi is a simple film. A very simple film. So simple, in fact, that our cat sat and watched the movie for thirty minutes and he seemed to be following it. There’s not a lot of story to speak of, really. It follows the early life of Bambi and his development from a fawn to a buck. 

 That seems to be the major theme of Bambi, the growth of a young fawn to a buck. The movie uses this story as a metaphor of sorts to demonstrate the growth of a young boy to a man. Bambi starts out his life following his mother, learning the ways of the world and making his childhood friends. As well as being his mother, Bambi’s mother is also representative of the safety and security of our childhood home and our existence in the world of innocence. We see as he develops from barely walking to hopping, skipping and speaking. From this point, his ability to interact with the world is enough where his mother feels him able to interact with “the meadow.” “The meadow” is the outside world, where Bambi can interact with others of his kind. There’s a flipside, in that “the meadow” also carries the potential risk of danger. In this realm, humans are harbingers and representative of chaos. Its this meadow where Bambi first meets his father and his future love, but it is also in this meadow that he loses his mother. And with that, he moves from youth to adulthood, from innocence to experience, from the protection of home to the uncertainty of the world.

In his new adult life, Bambi seems to start by continuing with how he was living before. But soon, we see, his friends start to fall in love and settle down. Soon, he too finds a mate, the girl from his youth, but he must fight for her, a problem that must be overcome much like what might pop up at the beginning of any relationship. In the ensuing fight, he defeats his opponent, completes his transition to adulthood and becomes a man, like his father. This is even echoed by him standing on the ridge much like his father does. After a short “honeymoon” period with his newly won “bride,” the same chaos that he experience in his youth starts to change the world around him. In this time, with guidance from his father, he must overcome this hardship and protect his new family. In doing so, he further cements himself as living into his father’s legacy, becoming the Great Prince of the Forest. Again, this is echoed by him literally mimicking his father with him standing on the ridge. And from this, he settles down, starts his family and the cycle begins anew with his new children.

 But you’re not really watching this movie for it’s story…

You’d watch this movie for the absolute beauty of the art and the animation. This movie was a pleasure to watch. The backgrounds are beautifully painted and capture the concept of a nice comfortable forest perfectly. The character art is some of the best that Disney’s had yet, even better than Fantasia. As far as the animation, altogether, I think the movie is pretty beautifully animated. Definitely better than the more cartoony style of Dumbo, but I’m not sure I’d say that it’s the best they’ve done yet. So far, I’d say that the overall art and design of this film is almost the best they’ve made, but I feel that Fantasia edges it out, just a little bit.

The sound design is good, but the music isn’t anything I’d write home about. There are songs, but nothing as memorable as the previous films. Snow White’s got “Someday My Prince Will Come,” Pinocchio’s got “When You Wish Upon a Star,” even Dumbo’s got “Baby Mine,” but there’s nothing even nearly equivalent when it comes to music in Bambi. 

Even though Bambi doesn’t have the most spectacular music and the story is simple, not super compelling, there’s something about the whole package that comes together and makes, I think, a really great movie. Maybe, not the best of Disney at the moment it was released, but it is definitely worth it’s spot as a classic. I also think this will probably be the best moment in Disney for the next little bit, because we are moving into Wartime Disney. The next couple of reviews will be movies I’ve never seen, most that I have never heard of and, I’ll admit, I’m a little worried for the next couple of week. We’ll see though.

-CJ

Bambi, is one of those films that I watched once as a kid, and semi forgot about. That’s not to say that it didn’t leave an impression on me, for years bits and pieces of it have ghosted through my head, and I’ve always wanted to pick it back up, but never had the chance to until now. Going into this was very pleasant, and I really found myself enjoying this film over almost everything we’ve seen so far. The art, music and voice acting are all supremely well done, the story is entertaining, and over all it’s a really wholesome film with very few flaws.

Bambi is a breath of fresh air compared to Dumbo. Where Dumbo feels like an extended cartoon, that hit the deadline within a few minutes of cut off. Bambi provides a beautiful polished gem of animation that’s well done in every way possible. From the contrasting colors, dynamic lighting, and smooth movement of the movie, every bit of animation in this film is perfect. Nothing feels weird or out of place unlike the previous movies we’ve seen. Unlike the deer in Snow White that felt like moving sacks of flour on stilts. The movements of the deer feel fully natural, and they act like they should in their natural habitat. There’s nothing unnatural to leave you feeling out of place, in fact the entire film feels like you’re on a nature walk through a Bob Ross painting. Speaking of Bob Ross, the back grounds in this movie are beautiful, and offer the perfect mix of subtle detail. They’re often faded, but you’re able to grasp what’s behind the characters. I would almost say that it feels like the movie is one long Bob Ross slideshow with a bunch of animated deer, and birds on the screen. That being said, the use of dramatic lights, and contrasting colors, during the duel between Bambi and Ronno, or the burning of the forest, really create an atmosphere all on their own. The animation of this film is by far my favorite out of the standard movies that we’ve watched so far, but Fantasia still holds the lead.

Bambi does suffer the same way musically Snow White, Pinochio, and Dumbo suffer, the music hasn’t stood the test of time, and while the songs in it are good, they’re a little hard to pick up lyrically. The orchestra comes in a bit strongly, and muddles some of the words in the songs, so you just have to pick it up and go with it. With that exception, the orchestral scores in Bambi are fantastic, they convey a wide range of emotion, and just like Fantasia the animation is paired flawlessly with it. Bambi does have strange vibe about it, where music wise it feels like it’s riding Fantasias coat tails, despite being almost three years younger than it’s predecessor.

Story wise Bambi feels and plays out like a proto version of The Lion King. It has the bond of the young prince with his parental figure, who he then loses half way through the film. While the two films may split here, we do end up with the same conclusion for each, with the young prince becoming the king/ Great Price of the jungle / forest. I would say this is why I love this movie so much. The Lion King is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it’s a bit hard to break away from comparing the two so much with story. I would imagine that this is one of the reasons that Bambi stuck with me the way it did, even though I only saw it once. Growing up I wanted another story like The Lion King, but I also wanted something that resembled where I grew up in Oregon.

The one major issue I have with Bambi pacing, and it’s in the most significant and serious section of the movie, when Bambi loses his mother. The setting for Bambi’s mother is well executed, and well set up, and I actually felt myself getting a little tense with what was going to happen despite knowing the plot. For those that may not remember, Bambi and his mother are out in the meadow, a place that she’s told him he must be wary of. They uncover some new spring grass and are grazing away when the first notes of hunters theme start creeping in over the soundtrack. Bambi’s mother goes on alert, and we get a few moments of her swiveling her ears, and looking around. It sets the mood fantastically, and gets you ready for what you know is coming. She tells Bambi to run, and we start getting shots of both Bambi, and his mother, then just Bambi. His mothers voice becomes fainter and fainter, before we hear the final gunshot as Bambi heads into the woods. This scene is set up and executed so well and I certainly see where people would consider this to be one of the most heart breaking Disney films of all time. The actress that plays Bambi’s mother has real panic in her voice when she tells him to “keep going” and “don’t look back” and it really tears into you.

After Bambi loses his mother, it starts to snow outside the thicket, and he starts looking for her. His voice echos in the silence, and we get another great bit of music with a choir singing low and slow as they would at a funeral. The world around Bambi is empty, and he’s the only thing we’re allowed to focus with or interact with. It’s as if we’re walking alone along side of him. The next thing we get is a blurred focus shot of The Great Prince of the Forest watching his son with the famous quote of “Your mother can’t be with you anymore.” He takes Bambi and we’re left to watch them fade into the snow fall. The entire scene takes less than ten minutes from start to finish, but it leaves you with a punch to the gut.

This scene is fantastically set up, and then it’s all ruined with the most disgustingly happy song about springtime I could imagine. Instead of the sad gray of winter, we’re met with pink, green, and yellows of spring, and birds whizzing and singing in the branches. It’s a weird jarring transition and it’s the one main thing about this movie that I really dislike. In The Lion King we’re able to grieve with Simba and accept his fathers passing, and here we’re swept off into the second half of the film. There’s no time to mourn, or to fully take in what’s happened. It feels like the movie came to a screeching stop, then started back up again without warning.

All and all, Bambi is an absolute gem of animation, and I’m really thrilled to be able to see it again. It has very few flaws, and other than feeling over extended cut of Fantasia, with a bit of well done voice acting thrown in to keep the plot line going. The music, use of dramatic lighting and color, along with the well done voice acting puts this as my second favorite film to date. I really did try to find something about this movie that I disliked, but in the end I couldn't find anything, other than the one transition. This will be the last movie that I’ve actually scene before, until we hit the 1950’s with Cinderella, so I’m very interested to see if anything will come and knock Bambi out of it’s current spot.

-AJ