| Bambi | |
|---|---|
Original theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Supervising director David Hand Sequence director James Algar Samuel Armstrong Graham Heid Bill Roberts Paul Satterfield Norman Wright |
| Produced by | Walt Disney |
| Story by | Story direction Perce Pearce Story adaptation Larry Morey Story development Vernon Stallings Melvin Shaw Carl Fallberg Chuck Couch Ralph Wright |
| Based on | Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten |
| Starring | Bobby Stewart Donnie Dunagan Hardie Albright John Sutherland Paula Winslowe Peter Behn Tim Davis Sam Edwards Will Wright Cammie King Ann Gillis Fred Shields Stan Alexander Sterling Holloway |
| Music by | Frank Churchill Edward H. Plumb |
| Studio | Walt Disney Productions |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 13, 1942 |
| Running time | 70 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $267,447,150 |
Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand (supervising a team of sequence directors), produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. The film was released by RKO Radio Pictures on August 13, 1942, and it is the fifth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series.
The main characters are Bambi, a white-tailed deer, his parents (the Great Prince of the forest and his unnamed mother), his friends Thumper (a pink-nosed rabbit), and Flower (a skunk), and his childhood friend and future mate, Faline. For the movie, Disney took the liberty of changing Bambi's species into a white-tailed deer from his original species of roe deer, since roe deer do not inhabit the United States, and the white-tailed deer is more familiar to Americans. The film received three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound (Sam Slyfield), Best Song (for "Love Is a Song" sung by Donald Novis) and Original Music Score.[1]
In June 2008, the American Film Institute presented a list of its "10 Top 10"—the best ten films in each of ten classic American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Bambi placed third in animation.[2] In December 2011, the film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
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A doe gives birth to a fawn in a forest thicket whom she names Bambi. After he learns to walk, Bambi befriends Thumper, a young rabbit, and while learning to talk he meets Flower, a young skunk. One day his mother takes him to the meadow, a place that is both wonderful and frightening. There he meets Faline, a doe-fawn, and his father, the Great Prince of the Forest. It is also during this visit that Bambi has his first encounter with man, who causes all the animals to flee the meadow. During a harsh winter, Bambi and his mother go to the meadow and discover a patch of new grass, heralding the arrival of spring. As they eat, his mother senses a hunter and orders Bambi to flee. As they run, gun shots ring out. When Bambi arrives at their thicket, he discovers his mother is no longer with him. He wanders the forest calling for her, but she does not answer. His father appears in front of him and tells Bambi "your mother can't be with you anymore," then leads him away.
In the spring, an adult Bambi is reunited with Thumper and Flower as the animals around them begin pairing up with mates. Though they resolve not to be "twitterpated" like the other animals in love, Thumper and Flower each leave with newly found mates. Bambi is disgusted, until he runs into Faline and they become a couple. As they happily dance and flirt through the woods, another buck, Ronno, appears who tries to force Faline to go with him. Though he initially struggles, Bambi's rage gives him the strength to defeat Ronno and push him off a cliff and into a river below.
That night, Bambi is awoken by the smell of smoke. His father explains that Man is in the forest and they must flee. Bambi goes back to search for Faline, but she is being chased by hunting dogs. Bambi finds her in time and fights off the dogs, allowing Faline to escape. With Faline safe, Bambi runs but is shot as he leaps over a ravine. The Great Prince finds him there and urges him back to his feet. Together, they escape the forest fire and go to a small island in a lake where the other animals, including Faline, have taken refuge.
At the end of the film, Faline gives birth to twin fawns, Bambi stands watch on the large hill, and the Great Prince silently turns and walks away.
Sidney Franklin, a producer and director at MGM films, purchased the film rights to Felix Salten's novel Bambi, A Life in the Woods in 1933, intending to adapt it as a live-action film. Deciding it would be too difficult to make such a film, he sold the film rights to Walt Disney in April 1937. Disney began work on crafting an animated adaptation immediately, intending it to be the company's second feature-length animated film and their first to be based on a specific, recent work.[3] The original novel was written for an adult audience, however, and was considered too "grim" and "somber" for a regular light-hearted Disney film. The artists also discovered that it would challenging to animate deer realistically, and at the same time keep the characters slightly exaggerated and "cartoony". These difficulties resulted in Disney putting production on hold while the studio worked on several other projects. In 1938, Disney assigned Perce Pearce and Carl Fallberg to work on the film's storyboards, but attention was soon drawn away as the studio began working on Fantasia (1940).[3] Finally, on August 17, 1939, production on Bambi began in earnest, though progressed slowly owing to changes in the studio personnel, location, and methodology of handling animation at the time.
There were many interpretations of the story. Characters such as Mr. Hare (Thumper's Father) and a comic duo of a Squirrel and a Chipmunk were created but eventually cut from the film.[4] There was a scene involving two autumn leaves conversing and eventually dying by falling to the ground, but the artist found that talking flora didn't work in the context of the film and instead used a visual metaphor of two realistic leaves falling to the ground.[5] There was a scene of Bambi stepping on an ant's nest and showing all the devastation that he caused, but it was cut for pacing reasons.[4] In the scene in which Bambi's mother dies there was a brief scene showing her getting shot, but the story team decided the scene was too sad, and that it was emotional enough to justify having her death occur off screen.[4] Disney wanted to show man being killed in the fire to prove to Bambi that man was not invincible.[4] However the scene was cut for unknown reasons. The writing was completed in July 1940, by which time the film's budget had swelled to $858,000.[6]
Walt Disney attempted to achieve realistic detail in this animated film. He had Rico LeBrun, a painter of animals, come and lecture to the animators on the structure and movement of animals.[7] Animators also visited the Los Angeles Zoo.[8] A pair of fawns (named Bambi and Faline) were shipped from the area of present-day Baxter State Park in Maine to the studio so that the artists could see first-hand the movement of these animals. The source of these fawns, from the Eastern United States, was the impetus for the transformation of Felix Salten's roe deer to white-tailed deer.[9] A small zoo was also established at the studio so animators could study other animals, like rabbits, ducks, owls, and skunks, at close range.[7] The animators learned a lot about animals during the films production that they'd utilize in future projects.[10] Animators now had a broader spectrum of animation styles, from the wider stylization of Mickey Mouse to the naturalistic look and realistic movement of the characters in Bambi.
The background of the film was inspired by the Eastern woodlands. One of the earliest and best-known artists for the Disney studio, Maurice "Jake" Day, spent several weeks in the Vermont and Maine forests, sketching and photographing deer, fawns, and the surrounding wilderness areas.[11] However his first sketches were too 'busy' as the eye did not know where to focus.[5] Ty Wong, a Chinese animator, showed Day some of his impressionistic paintings of a forest. Day liked the paintings and appointed him art director of the film.[4] Wong's backgrounds were revolutionary since they had more detail around the center and less around the edges. This technique made the audience focus on the characters.
Although there were no humans in Bambi, live-action footage of humans was used for one scene: actress Jane Randolph and Ice Capades star Donna Atwood acted as live-action references for the scene where Bambi and Thumper are on the icy pond.[12]
The realism that Disney was pushing caused delays in production; animators were unaccustomed to drawing natural animals, and expert animators could only manage around eight drawings a day. This amounted to only half-a-foot of film a day, unlike the normal rate of production of ten feet. This resulted in less than a second of film versus over thirteen seconds.[7] Disney was later forced to slash 12 minutes from the film before final animation, to save costs on production due to losses suffered in Europe.[6]
Bambi was released in theaters in 1942, during World War II, and was Disney's 5th full-length animated film. Bambi was re-released to theatres in 1947, 1957, 1966, 1975, 1982, and 1988. It was then made available on home video in 1989. Even in home video, Bambi has seen multiple releases, including two VHS releases, in 1989 (Classics Version) and 1997 (Masterpiece Collection Version), and most recently a digitally-remastered and restored Platinum Edition DVD.[13] The Platinum Edition DVD went on moratorium on January 31, 2007.[14]
Bambi was released in Diamond Edition on March 1st, 2011,[15] consisting of a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack. According to Cinema Blend, this release is set to include multiple bonus features that were not previously included in Bambi home releases: a documentary entitled Inside Walt’s Story Meetings – Enhanced Edition, two deleted scenes, a deleted song, an image gallery, and a game entitled Disney’s Big Book of Knowledge: Bambi Edition.[16] The release will also mark the first use of "Disney Second Screen",[17] a feature which is accessed via a computer or iPad app download that syncs with the Blu-ray disc, [18] allowing the viewer to follow along by interacting with animated flip-books, galleries and trivia while watching the movie.[15] A UK version of Diamond Edition was released on February 7, 2011.[19]
Bambi lost money at the box office for its first release, but recouped its considerable cost during the 1947 re-release.[20] This was due to the timing of the release, during World War II and this hurt the film's box office numbers. The film did not do so well at the box office in the U.S., and the studio no longer had access to many European markets that provided a large portion of its profits.[20] Roy Disney sent a telegram to his brother Walt after the New York opening of the film that read: "Fell short of our holdover figure by $4,000. Just came from Music Hall. Unable to make any deal to stay third week...Night business is our problem."[20]
At the time of the film's release, Bambi received mixed to negative reviews from the critics,[21] mainly because of the realistic animation of the animals, and the story of their fight against the evil humans in the story. Hunters spoke out against the movie, saying it was "an insult to American sportsmen."[20] The New York Times claimed that "In the search for perfection, Mr. Disney has come perilously close to tossing away his whole world of cartoon fantasy." [21] Film critic, Manny Farber called it "entirely unpleasant" and agreed with New York Times statement saying "In an effort to trump the realism of flesh and blood movies, he [Disney] has given up fantasy, which was pretty much the magic element" [21]. The criticism, however, was short-lived, and the financial shortfall of its first release was made up multiple times in the subsequent re-releases.[20]
Today, the film is viewed as a classic. The film holds a 91% "Fresh" rating from fans and critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics Mick Martin and Marsha Porter call the film "...the crowning achievement of Walt Disney's animation studio". In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten" — the best ten films in ten classic American film genres — after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Bambi was acknowledged as the third best film in the animation genre.[22]It is also listed in the Top 25 Horror Movies of all Time by Time magazine. Bambi, Time states, "has a primal shock that still haunts oldsters who saw it 40, 50, 65 years ago."[23]
The off-screen villain "man" has been placed #20 on AFI's List of Heroes and Villains.[24]
John Williams claimed that Frank Churchill's theme music for "man" (which consisted of 3 simple notes) was one of the inspirations for the theme music in Jaws (which consists of two notes).[25]
Former Beatle Paul McCartney has credited the shooting death of Bambi's mother for his initial interest in animal rights,[26] an example of what has been called the Bambi effect.
Soon after the film's release, Walt Disney allowed his characters to appear in fire prevention public service campaigns. However, Bambi was only loaned to the government for a year, so a new symbol was needed, leading to the creation of Smokey Bear. Bambi and his mother also make a cameo appearance in the satirical 1955 Donald Duck short No Hunting: drinking from a forest stream, the deer are startled by a sudden trickle of beer cans and other debris, and Bambi's mother tells him, "Man is in the forest. Let's dig out."
In 2006, the Ad Council, in partnership with the United States Forest Service, started a series of Public Service Announcement ads that feature footage from Bambi and Bambi II for wildfire prevention. During the ads, as the Bambi footage is shown, the screen will momentarily fade into black with the text "Don't let our forests...become once upon a time", and usually (but not always) ending the ads with Bambi's line "Mother, what we gonna do today?" followed by Smokey Bear saying "Only you can prevent wildfires" as the Smokey logo is shown on the screen. The ads air on various television networks, and the Ad Council has also put them on Youtube.[27]
In December 2011, Bambi was among the films selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.[28] In its induction, the Registry said that the film was one of Walt Disney's favorites and that it has been "recognized for its eloquent message of nature conservation."[29]
Bambi II was released as a midquel sequel to Bambi. Set in middle of Bambi, it shows the Great Prince of the Forest struggling to raise the motherless Bambi, and Bambi's doubts about his father's love. The film was released direct-to-video on February 7, 2006. While the film was a direct-to-video release in the United States and other countries, including Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, it was a theatrical release in some countries, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Dominican Republic, France, Mexico, the United Kingdom and some other European countries.
The copyrights for Bambi, A Life in the Woods were inherited by Anna Wyler, Salten's daughter, who renewed them in 1954. After her death, Wyler's husband sold the rights to Twin Books, which subsequently filed a law suit against Disney, claiming Disney owed it money for the continued licensing for the use of the book. Disney countered by claiming that Salten had published the story in 1923 without a copyright notice, and was thus immediately entered into the public domain. Disney also argued that if the claimed 1923 publication date was accurate, then the copyright renewal filed in 1954 had been registered after the deadline and was thus invalid. The courts initially upheld Disney's view; however, in 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court reversed the decision on appeal.[30]
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