Bambi is a 1942 American animated coming-of-age drama film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures, loosely based on Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods. It was directed by David D. Hand, and a team of six sequence directors.

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 cottontail rabbit) and Flower (a skunk); and his childhood friend and future mate, Faline. In the original book, Bambi was a roe deer, a species native to Europe, but Disney decided to base the character on a mule deer from Arrowhead, California. Illustrator Maurice "Jake" Day convinced Disney that the mule deer had large "mule-like" ears and were more common to western North America, but that the white-tail deer was more recognized throughout the United States. 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.

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 attained third in animation. A follow-up, Bambi II, premiered in theaters in Argentina on January 26, 2006, before being released as a direct-to-video title in the United States on February 7, 2006. In January 2020, it was announced that a photorealistic computer-animated remake was set to be in development. the film's title character and protagonist

  • Bobby Stewart as Baby Bambi
  • Hardie Albright as Adolescent Bambi
  • John Sutherland as Adult Bambi
  • Peter Behn as Thumper, a rabbit friend of Bambi's
  • Tim Davis as Adolescent Thumper
  • Sam Edwards as Young Adult Thumper
  • Paula Winslowe as Bambi's Mother and the Pheasant
  • Stan Alexander as Flower, a striped skunk and another friend of Bambi's
  • Tim Davis as Adolescent Flower
  • Sterling Holloway as Young Adult Flower
  • Will Wright as Friend Owl a female deer with whom Bambi eventually falls in love
  • Ann Gillis as Adult Faline
  • Fred Shields as the Great Prince of the Forest
  • Margaret Lee as Mrs. Rabbit
  • Mary Lansing as Aunt Ena and Mrs. Possum
  • Perce Pearce as Mr. Mole
  • Thelma Boardman as Girl Bunny, Quail Mother, Female Pheasant

Production

Development

In 1933, Sidney Franklin purchased the rights to Felix Salten's novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods (1923) to produce a live-action film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but soon realized that it would be too difficult to achieve. 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. These difficulties resulted in Disney putting production on hold while the studio worked on several other projects, and eventually Pinocchio became the studio's second film. This character later became known as Thumper. There originally was a brief shot in the scene where Bambi's mother dies after jumping over a log and getting shot by a man. Larry Morey, however, felt the scene was too dramatic, and that it was emotional enough to justify having her death occur off screen.

Animation

Although the animators had animated deer in Snow White, they were animated, in the words of Eric Larson, "like big flour sacks". To ensure realistic movement, Disney animators studied animals first-hand by visiting the Los Angeles Zoo and by observing a small, in-studio zoo that included rabbits, owls, skunks, and two fawns named Bambi and Faline. LeBrun's sketches depicted realistic animals, but as characters they lacked personality. Marc Davis created the final design of Bambi by incorporating LeBrun's realistic study of deer anatomy but exaggerating the character's face by making his proportions baby-like (short snout, big eyes, etc.). The animators learned a lot about animals during the film's production, giving them a broader spectrum of animation styles to use in future projects.

The backgrounds for the film were inspired by the Eastern American 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. However, his first sketches were too "busy" as the eye did not know where to focus. It was released in theaters in United States five days later, on August 13. The film was released during World War II and did not perform as well as hoped. Roy O. 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." Disney lacked access to much of the European market during the war, but the film earned rentals of $1,685,000 internationally for an initial worldwide total of $2,955,000, Disney's third-highest, behind Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) with $7.8 million and Pinocchio (1940) with $3.2 million. taking its total domestic rental earnings to $4.7 million. The film earned $14 million in domestic rentals from its reissues in 1966 and 1975, giving it a total domestic rental of $18,735,000, which equates to a gross of around $40 million. With grosses from international reissues, the film has a worldwide gross of $267 million.

Home media

Prior to Bambis initial release on home video on September 28, 1989, initial orders placed in the United States and Canada up to the end of August totaled 9.8 million units, the second largest number of orders for a video at the time, behind E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with a wholesale value of $167 million. Even in home video, it has seen multiple releases, including three VHS releases — in 1989 (Classics Version), 1997 (Masterpiece Collection Version), and 2005 (Platinum Edition version), one Betamax release in 1989 (Classics version), two Laserdisc releases in 1989 (Classics version) and 1997 (Masterpiece Collection version). In 2005, a digitally remastered and restored Platinum Edition DVD was released; it went on moratorium on January 31, 2007.

Bambi was released as a Diamond Edition on March 1, 2011, consisting of a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack. This release included multiple bonus features 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. This release also marked the first use of "Disney Second Screen", a feature which is accessed via a computer or iPad app download that syncs with the Blu-ray disc, allowing the viewer to follow along by interacting with animated flip-books, galleries and trivia while watching the movie. In honor of the film's 75th anniversary, Bambi was released as part of the Walt Disney Signature Collection on May 23, 2017 (digital) and June 6, 2017 (Blu-ray/DVD/digital combo pack).

Localization

On the initiative of Stephen Greymoming, professor of Native American studies and anthropology at the University of Montana, an Arapaho-language dubbing of the movie was produced in 1994, in collaboration with the Northern Plains Educational Foundation. The final product was only a partial dubbing, as the spoken parts were dubbed in Arapaho, but all the songs were left in English. The dubbed version of the movie premiered on November 3 the same year, and Disney later provided the Arapaho Nation with 2000 VHS tapes of the movie. The dubbing was never issued again in any other forms, until it was uploaded on the streaming platform Disney+ in October 2022. Bambi was the first of three Disney movies to receive a dubbing in a Native American language. and then Disney's Moana in Hawaiian two years later. While the first was also made available on Disney+,

Reception

Critical response

At the time of the film's release, Bambi received mixed reviews from the critics, mainly because of the lack of fantasy elements in the film and objection towards a dramatic story of animals and their struggle to survive in the woods and avoid the threat of humans. 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." Manny Farber of The New Republic wrote that "Bambi is interesting because it's the first one that's been entirely unpleasant" and that "Mickey wouldn't be caught dead in this". Farber added that "In an attempt to ape the trumped-up realism of flesh and blood movies, he has given up fantasy, which was pretty much the magic element." Even Disney's daughter Diane complained, saying that Bambi's mother did not need to die. When Walt claimed that he was only following the book, Diane protested, saying that he had taken other liberties before and that Walt Disney could do whatever he wanted.

Into the 21st century, Bambi is viewed much more favorably. Critics Mick Martin and Marsha Porter call the film "the crowning achievement of Walt Disney's animation studio". English film historian Leslie Halliwell wrote that Bambi was "one of Disney's most memorable and brilliant achievements with a great comic character in Thumper and a climactic forest fire sequence that is genuinely thrilling." He concluded that it was "a triumph of the animator's arts".

Accolades

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|-

! Award

! Category

! Nominee(s)

! Result

|-

| rowspan="3"| Academy Awards

| Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture

| Frank Churchill and Edward H. Plumb

|

|-

| Best Original Song

| "Love Is a Song" <br> Music by Frank Churchill; <br> Lyrics by Larry Morey

|

|-

| Best Sound Recording

| C. O. Slyfield

|

|-

| Genesis Awards

| colspan="2"| Feature Film – Classic

|

|-

| Golden Globe Awards

| Special Achievement Award

| Walt Disney

|

|-

| Hugo Awards

| Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form

| Perce Pearce, Larry Morey and David D. Hand

|

|-

| National Film Preservation Board

| colspan="2"| National Film Registry

|

|-

| Online Film & Television Association Awards

| colspan="2"| Hall of Fame – Motion Picture

|

|-

| Satellite Awards

| colspan="2"| Outstanding Youth DVD

|

|}

In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "10 Top 10"&nbsp;– the best ten films in ten classic American film genres&nbsp;– after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Bambi was acknowledged as the third best film in the animation genre. 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."

American Film Institute

  • AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies&nbsp;– Nominated
  • AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains:
  • Man&nbsp;– No. 20 Villain
  • AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores&nbsp;– Nominated
  • AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)&nbsp;– Nominated
  • AFI's 10 Top 10&nbsp;– No. 3 Animated film

Legacy

The off-screen villain "Man" has been placed No. 20 on AFI's List of Heroes and Villains. Some critics have cited parallels between Frank Churchill's theme music for "Man" (which consisted of three simple notes) and John Williams's theme music in Jaws (which consists of two notes). Kathryn Schulz of The New Yorker stated that due to the film becoming far more prominent than the book, it "rendered [Felix Salten] virtually unknown." According to Schulz, the film also made the original novel, which was previously given prominent attention and discussed, "obscure".

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 Announcements 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. Bambi had previously been the Forest Service's advertising icon beginning in 1942, but was only allowed by Disney to use the character for a year.

In December 2011, Bambi was among the films selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. 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." Characters of the film appear in several other Disney media, such as guest appearances in the animated television series House of Mouse, Bambi being a character to summon in the video game Kingdom Hearts and its sequel Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and Bambi, Thumper, Flower, Faline and Great Prince of the Forest being playable characters in Disney Magic Kingdoms. On December 17, 2018, a prison sentence passed against a man, in what is considered the biggest deer poaching case in Missouri history, contained the stipulation that the prisoner must view the film at least once each month during his one-year prison sentence.

Media and merchandise

Comic adaptation

The Silly Symphony Sunday comic strip ran a three-month-long adaptation of Bambi from July 19 to October 4, 1942.

Follow-up

A follow-up, Bambi II, was released in 2006. Set in the middle of Bambi, Bambi II shows the Great Prince of the Forest struggling to raise the motherless Bambi, and Bambi's doubts about his father's love. 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.

Stalled CGI remake

On January 28, 2020, it was announced that a photorealistic CGI feature-length remake is in development with a script co-written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Lindsey Beer. Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz, and Andrew Miano would produce the film; a joint-venture production between Walt Disney Pictures, Depth of Field Studios, and Known Universe Productions. Disney described the film as a "companion piece" to The Jungle Book (2016) and The Lion King (2019), as the three films feature wildlife that requires extensive CGI and special effects. In March 2024, Polley was reportedly no longer attached as director. There has been no further news about the project since then.

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, a publishing company which subsequently filed a lawsuit 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, thus it 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 in Twin Books Corp. v. Walt Disney Co., 83 F.3d 1162 (1996). The American copyright of the novel expired on January 1, 2022.

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Bambi, an essay by John Wills at National Film Registry
  • Bambi at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on February 22, 2018.