Like many other children, I was raised on the films and stories of Walt Disney. Some of my earliest memories involve a picture book tie-in of THE SWORD AND THE STONE, knowing every lyric to “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”, and staring up in awe as the Wicked Queen transformed into a Witch in SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES. All of the tales Disney Studio chose to tell in their Golden Era were known by verse during story time in my childhood bedroom.

All except BAMBI.

BAMBI is set in an American forest and begins with the birth of “a new prince”. All of the woodland creatures make a pilgrimage to a white-tailed dear who has given birth to a new fawn. The fawn is named Bambi, and is embraced as a prince by every creature great and small. The fawn is given the lay of the land thanks to Thumper, a young rabbit with enthusiasm to spare. Together, they soon meet Flower, a bashful skunk who takes a bashful shining to the attention.

The film takes us through the harsh realities of life in the forest for these woodland creatures…from spring to winter, from birth to death.

As BAMBI played out, I found myself trying to settle on one of two different theories:

A – BAMBI would never be embraced by modern audiences
or
B – BAMBI would never be made by a modern major studio.

The story of BAMBI is a rather subtle one. Simply put, it is the story of a deer being born and learning about his surroundings. Much patience is given to Bambi learning how to walk, learning how to speak,learning what to eat, and just meeting his fellow woodland creatures. Really, Bambi is just a few pegs above an animated nature film. I could see modern parents perhaps bringing their children to see it in the hopes of entertaining them…but I wonder how many of those children would stay engaged given how easily kids get bored nowadays. If the kids didn’t get bored, they’d certainly get scared for reasons I’ll get into later. Put it all together, and I see modern audiences widely rejecting BAMBI in theatres.

That is assuming a filmmaker could find a studio willing to bet on an animated feature like BAMBI anyway. It eschews plucky adventures in favour of natural maturity, its antagonist is primarily an off-screen entity, it spends a lot of its third act talking about the birds & the bees (literally), and again – children are gonna get scared. BAMBI is a story told in very broad strokes, and studios aren’t interested in telling such abstract stories anymore…and certainly not in a cartoon.

A moment to answer an obvious question: No, I didn’t cry when Bambi’s mother died. This isn’t to suggest that I wasn’t affected, quite the contrary. In fact, I can think of few lines of dialogue as sad as Bambi calling out “Mother?” in vain. Such a plot point is extremely bold, as you are basically spelling out for children the very mortality of their own parents. It’s intensity is only mildly dulled by the fact that the carnage is kept off-screen, but made that much worse when Bambi’s guardian finds him and says quite matter-of-factly “Your mother can’t be with you anymore.”

That’s the law of nature folks. They don’t have the luxury of grieving or memorials – they need to get it together and move on, lest they get killed themselves.

Interestingly, the death of Bambi’s mother wasn’t what shocked me the most. As the warning call goes out through the forest that man is on the hunt, we meet a small flock of quails hiding in the bush. One particular quail is inconsolably scared and wants to flee, while the rest of the flock plead with it not to fly.

In a panic the quail takes off. We hear the inevitable gunshot – and then see the quail crash back down to the ground! Are you kidding me? It’s not bad enough that cute little woodland creatures are trembling on the big screen, we actually have to watch the carnage too? I knew Bambi’s mom was going to get clipped – nobody said anything about a frightened quail. Boy was Walt ever sadistic.

While it’s no small wonder that audiences turned a cold shoulder to BAMBI upon release, there’s something to be said about its endurance.

Today, if a film doesn’t test well prior to release, it gets buried…banished to dvd (maybe)…seldom heard from again. Films that get released and under-perform cause even greater fervour: policies are drawn up and people get fired. A film like BAMBI would crumble under poor word-of mouth today, with chatter about how poorly its characters are, and how little plot there is. It would leave theatres almost as fast as it arrived. (Such was the case for the film’s release in 1942).

To their credit Disney studios knew what they had created – how glorious the art was and how enduring the story was. They came back to it a few years later…then brought it back again, and again. The same viewers and critics who had once written it off as “entirely unpleasant”, were forced to reconsider it. They clung to its charm, they got a better appreciation for its visual splendour, and were still every bit as shocked by its violence as they were the first time…even though they knew it was coming.

Perhaps it’s best that I am only coming to BAMBI now, as only now can I truly appreciate its legacy as a film and its place within the Disney canon. As a child I would have seen it as cute in places, and perhaps even dull in places. All these years later, I see it as a bold story, an example of visual elegance to be mentioned in the same breath as SLEEPING BEAUTY, and a touchstone for what animated film is capable of.

…but did I have to see a quail get shot?

I intend to post my entries on the final Tuesday of every month. If you are participating, drop me an email (ryanatthematineedotca) when your post is up and I’ll make sure to link to your entry.

Here’s the round-up for June (so far)…

Dave Voigt watched SECRET SUNSHINE

Sean Kelly watched THE TERMINATOR

Dan Heaton watched EASY RIDER

Jake Cole  watched THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Courtney Small watched DAYS OF HEAVEN

Steve Honeywell watched TRAINSPOTTING

Max Covill watched THREE COLORS: BLUE

Bob Turnbull watched both WHITE HEAT and ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES

28 Replies to “Blindsided by BAMBI”

  1. To answer you’re question… YES. You needed that. Honestly I know I saw this film as a child and I know all the beats, including the mom getting shot and the introduction of the skunk and rabbit (thumper)… but I think that might be it. I’ve heard so much recently about how messed up all of these golden era Disney animated films are. They are dark.

    I should probably revisit them soon.

    1. I did a post about it more than a year ago: That the stories we think are wholesome and family-friendly come with a lot of edge to them (heck, watched Roger Rabbit lately?). It’s good in a way though – helps kids build up some toughness…though that didn’t work so well for me.

      PS: Yup, Thumper is the rabbit – the skunk is Flower.

  2. I like BAMBI, but I think it’s one of the classic Disney films that I was not too keen on rewatching often. It’s interesting to note that while most animated films average at 90 minutes these days, BAMBI is a mere 70 (I think only DUMBO is shorter – that one’s only 64 minutes).

    1. Funny you mention the film’s succinct runtime since that was something that came as a happy surprise. As it turned out, I’d seen almost everything in swaths over time.

      The best part is that it feels like every second of those seventy minutes stays right on-point.

  3. “Boy was Walt ever sadistic.”

    You said it. We have a tendency to look back at classic Disney with fondness and through rose-colored glasses. It’s all sweet and innocent. There’s a lot of scary, scary stuff in classic Disney, though. Think of the queen’s transformation in Snow White, for instance, or the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence in Fantasia. There’s a scary transformation in Pinocchio, too. Almost all of the classic Disney animation has things truly terrifying, even scarring for young kids.

    The same is true for a lot of classic family films, really. The Wizard of Oz has one of the first on-screen dismemberments (the Scarecrow), and then there’s that boat ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

    1. You said it! And it doesn’t feel like it’s left the company’s DNA either. As Stevee and I discussed in the podcast, that incinerator scene in TOY STORY 3 certainly feels like it’s a page out of the classic Disney playbook.

  4. I really need to re-visit this movie. I remember seeing Bambi when I was a kid in a re-release in theaters, but I don’t remember much beyond that. We picked up the Blu-ray recently and my daughter watched a bit, but I think it was too slow for her at this age. I’m going to take a look at it again one of these days. I expect it would surprise me like it did for you.

    1. I imagine it would look glorious on blu-ray, especially the winter and fire sequences. Moreover, I’d wager that the bonus material on the package could provide some interesting insight.

      Do give it a look sometime!

  5. I saw this for the first time when I was very small. Watching the quail and Bambi’s mother getting killed was traumatic, after that, I never watched it again. When I was six I took the movie out of the VCR when my mom put it on again.

    1. Strangely, seeing the quail die as an adult affected me way more than it would have as a kid.

      But enough time has passed – I think it’s time for you to revisit it.

  6. Great post. Very true about Walt – think about how terrifying the sequence is when Snow white runs through the forrest (logs turn into alligators, tree branches grabbing at her hair), the concept of Dumbo having to conisder how (a)his Mum is imprisoned and (b) is possibly insane. The final sequence in Fantasia. Yup, pretty sinister stuff.

    But brilliant. The artistry too of BAMBI is the highlight. The animals look equally real, but relatable too. Thats brilliant animation.

    Do check out the shorts and Disney coverage on my site and, when you’re ready, check out the next one: SALUDOS AMIGOS! (ha ha ha…)

    1. As you likely know given all your posts about the Disney Classics, this film actually broke the studio’s established pace because all of those animals took the artists so long to get just right – both in the way they looked and the way they moved.

      I have been following your series with great enthusiasm actually – can’t wait for you to get up to SLEEPING BEAUTY.

      1. I have the Blu Ray, I just need to watch it. It’d be nice to do them in chronological order but i think ill be waiting a long time for th 7-10 flms in the collection. SLEEPING BEUATY, I think, is Number 11.

  7. Beautiful write-up. You often make me look at some films from a different angle. I tend to agree that Bambi would be totally slated by modern audiences and studios would never consider it as a potential idea. There’s a good point about parents’ mortality… Having watched it as a kid, strangely I don’t remember myself thinking about it. It was just painful for me to see animals hurt (and it’s still the case), so it was bold anyway. However, I’ve always loved this beaut of a film!

    1. Thank you Lesya – you just made my day.

      Nudging people to look at a film from another angle is exactly what I hope to do when I write about a classic. I’m not interested in reviewing them, since whatever has allowed them to endure over time (about seventy years in this case) makes them essentially “review proof”.

      Glad I’ve been able to do that for you – hopefully I can keep measuring up to expectation!

  8. I couldn’t keep up this month. But if it’s any consolation, I did watch the Three Colors Trilogy for the first time and loved it! Just as a note I don’t think I’ve ever watched Bambi from front-to-end either.

    1. I won’t tell if you won’t!

      Why not just re-label the Three Color post(s) and use them?
      Give me the link(s) and I’ll add them to the list.

  9. I’ll have to revisit this one, along with most of Disney’s classics. I saw them so many times as a kid, because they were the few films we had in our VHS collection, and I remember this being one of the few I didn’t care much for. It had its charm, but I never found the character or the story that compelling as a kid. Perhaps it was because of how free-form and unstructured it was, and the lack of a clear antagonist. I wonder if I’d enjoy it more now as an adult.

    1. That’s part of what makes it so unique is that it’s less interested in fleshing out any one character than trying to establish the entire ecosystem of the forest as one big character.

      Like a much subtler LION KING.

      I’d be curious to read your thoughts on it.

  10. Way late in getting my post up for this month, but at least I still made it within the month. I suppose that makes me just a little bit less precious though…Still, would you kindly link it in?

    1. Sometimes I wonder if kids just have better resources and can handle this sort of this sort of thing better than adults can. Hey, by the way – if you want to start joining in on this project, we still have six entries to go.

      Whaddaya say, wanna scratch some off the ‘to-see’ list and write about ’em?

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