Bambi
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- This article is about the 1942 Walt Disney film. For other uses, see Bambi (disambiguation).
| Bambi | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | David D. Hand |
| Produced by | Walt Disney |
| Written by | Felix Salten (novel) Larry Morey (story adaptation) Perce Pearce (story direction) Gustaf Tenggren (illustration) |
| 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 |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 13, 1942 |
| Running time | 70 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | Over $2,000,000 |
| Followed by | Bambi II (2006) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Bambi is a 1942 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and originally released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on August 13, 1942. The fifth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is based on the 1923 book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten.
The main characters are Bambi, a deer who is the young prince of the forest, his parents (the Great Prince of the forest and his unnamed mother), and his friends Thumper (a pink-nosed rabbit), Flower (a skunk), and his childhood friend and future mate, Faline (also a White-tailed deer). 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 don't inhabit the United States, and the white-tailed deer is more familiar to Americans. This film received 3 Academy Award nominations for Best Sound, Best Song for "Love is a song" and Original Music Score.
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[edit] Plot
The first half of the movie mainly involves Bambi's fawnhood, such as a walk through the woods, a day in the meadow, and his first encounter with snow.
The pivotal scene in the movie involves Bambi's mother and her death at the hands of Man. The scene is set in late winter, and Bambi and his mother struggle to find food as mournful music plays. Joy is felt as they discover a patch of new grass, signaling the arrival of Spring, and joyful music is heard on the soundtrack. However, as they feast, the mood changes again, and Man's approach is heard off-screen, represented only by his theme music (a low, three-note motif). Bambi's mother suddenly catches Man's scent, and orders her child to run. As they flee across the snow field, shots ring out. The camera stays with young Bambi as he runs through the forest, finally reaching their den. He turns around to find that his mother is nowhere to be seen.
In a series of dissolves, Bambi wanders desperately through the forest calling for her, but no answer comes. Bambi is startled by the sudden appearance of his father, the great prince of the forest, who tells him his mother can no longer be with him. This scene has often been voted as the saddest/most tear-jerking moment in motion-picture history.
The movie then skips forward in time to the spring, when Bambi, Thumper, Flower, and Faline are all seen having grown up to adulthood. They become "twitterpated" over potential mates. Bambi and Faline become a couple. However, their happiness is threatened by Ronno, a buck who's after Faline himself. He fights with Bambi and at first seems to have the upper hand until Bambi somehow manages to wound Ronno in his shoulder and throw him from the cliff on which they were fighting. Ronno falls from the cliff and into a nearby river, from which he is not seen again.
Man enters the forest again, and is responsible for a forest fire that sends all the life in the forest running for refuge in a river. Faline is cornered by hunting dogs while fleeing, and is rescued only when Bambi bravely fights them off. Upon escaping the hunting dogs, Bambi takes a tremendous leap across a ravine and is shot by a hunter but only wounded slightly. After finally escaping the burning forest with his father he is reunited with Faline, along with the other animals of the forest.
The film ends with the birth of Bambi and Faline's two fawns, with Bambi standing proudly at the top of the mountain, looking down at the newborn fawns, just as The Prince had done at Bambi's birth.
[edit] Pre-production
Walt Disney attempted to achieve realistic detail in this animated film. The artists heard lectures from animal experts, and visited the Los Angeles Zoo.[1] 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.[2] The background of the film was also 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.[3]
[edit] Release history
[edit] Release dates
[edit] Re-release schedule & home video
Bambi was released in theaters in 1942, during World War II and was Disney's 5th full length animated film. It was an advance over the previous movies in sophistication of the animation, due to the experience gained in character animation at the Disney studio. The famous art direction of Bambi, which suggests emotion and the feeling of a forest rather than depicting a real forest, was due to the influence of Tyrus Wong, a former painter who provided eastern and painterly influence to the backgrounds. Bambi was re-released to theaters in 1947, 1957, 1966, 1975, 1982, and 1988. It was released on VHS in 1989 (Classics Version), 1997 (Masterpiece Collection Version), and digitally remastered and restored for the March 1, 2005 Platinum Edition DVD.[4] The Platinum Edition DVD went on moratorium on January 31, 2007.[5] The Masterpiece Version was the first Disney Video to be THX certified.
[edit] Recycled animation from Bambi in other films
Animation from Bambi has been reused in several other Disney films, especially footage of birds, leaves and generic woodland. For example, one scene in The Fox and the Hound reused footage of the animals running from the rain in Bambi's "Little April Shower" sequence. The most reused footage from Bambi are the few seconds of Bambi's mother looking up from eating grass just before she is killed by the hunter. This footage has been used in hunting scenes in The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book. It is also featured in The Rescuers during the song "Someone's Waiting For You" and in the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast. Even a latter-day Donald Duck short featured Bambi and his mother. They are drinking from a stream and then a bunch of garbage floats past them in the stream and Bambi's mother says to him calmly, "Man is in the forest. Let's dig out." They then leave. Friend Owl makes an appearance in Goliath II.[citation needed]
[edit] Smokey Bear wildfire prevention
In 1942 the animated feature film Bambi was released. Soon after, 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.
In 2005, 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 more often, Bambi 2) 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.
[edit] Bambi in popular culture
A large part of Bambi references in popular culture are based on the famous, heart breaking scene in which Bambi's mother is shot by hunters.
- The off-screen villain "man" has been placed #20 on AFI's List of Heroes and Villains.[6]
- Several Hunting and fishing magazines, such as Field and Stream report that this character is a symbol of the "animal rights nuts" who are against fishing and hunting.[Quotation needed from source]
- An episode of the British sitcom, The Young Ones is called "Bambi". In the episode Neil starts to cry when he thinks of "Bambi and his mother lost in the snow."
- In the 1993 film The Sandlot, Scott Smalls overhears Hamilton Porter doing an impression of Babe Ruth saying that he is "The Great Bambino." Smalls asks who this is and Porter believes it to be blasphemous. After Porter exclaims "THE GREAT BAMBINO!", smalls replies "Oh yeah, I thought you said 'The Great Bambi'" in which Hamilton says, "That Wimpy Deer,?!"
- In an episode of The Animaniacs entitled "Bumbie's Mom," Bumbie, an obvious play on Bambi, yells out "Mama? Mama? Where are you Mama?" and hears a gunshot. Tufts of fur then fly out around him as he says "Mama?" and looks confused.
[edit] Soundtrack listing
- Main Title (Love Is A Song)
- Morning In The Woods/The Young Prince/Learning To Walk
- Exploring/Say Bird/Flower
- Little April Shower
- The Meadow/Bambi Sees Faline/Bambi Gets Annoyed
- Gallop Of The Stags/The Great Prince Of The Forest/Man
- Autumn/The First Snow/Fun On The Ice
- The End Of Winter/New Spring Grass/Tragedy In The Meadow
- Wintery Winds
- Let's Sing A Gay Little Spring Song
- It Could Even Happen To Flower
- Bambi Gets Twitterpated/Stag Fight
- Looking For Romance (I Bring You A Song)
- Man Returns
- Fire/Reunion/Finale
- Rain Drops (Demo Recording)
- Bonus Interview – Introduced by Richard Kiley: Walt Disney
- Bonus Interview – Introduced by Richard Kiley: Ollie Johnston And Frank Thomas
- Bonus Interview – Introduced by Richard Kiley: Henry Mancini
On Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic, this includes Love is a Song on the red disc, Little April Shower on the green disc, and Looking for Romance (I Bring You a Song) on the purple disc. And on Disney's Greatest Hits, this also includes Little April Shower on another green disc.
The original 1942 release included two additional songs (that were subsequently removed):[7]
- "Twitterpated": (Based on Friend Owl's lecture on the amorous effects of spring) written by Helen Bliss, Robert Sour and Henry Manners.
- "Thumper Song": written by Helen Bliss, Robert Sour and Henry Manners
[edit] Voice cast
| Actor | Role(s) |
|---|---|
| Bobby Stewart | Baby Bambi |
| Donnie Dunagan | Young Bambi |
| Hardie Albright | Adolescent Bambi |
| John Sutherland | Adult Bambi |
| Paula Winslowe | Bambi's Mother and Pheasant |
| Peter Behn | Young Thumper |
| Tim Davis | Adolescent Thumper, Adolescent Flower |
| Sam Edwards | Adult Thumper |
| Stan Alexander | Young Flower |
| Sterling Holloway | Adult Flower |
| Will Wright | Friend Owl |
| Cammie King | Young Faline |
| Ann Gillis | Adult Faline |
| Fred Shields | Great Prince of the Forest |
| Thelma Boardman | Girl Bunny, Quail Mother and Frightened Pheasant |
| Mary Lansing | Aunt Ena, Mrs. Possum, Pheasant |
| Margaret Lee | Mrs. Rabbit |
| Otis Harlan | Mr. Mole |
| Marion Darlington | Bird calls |
| Clarence Nash | Bullfrog |
| Stuart Erwin | Tree Squirrel |
[edit] Supervising animators
- Franklin Thomas (Bambi and Thumper)
- Milton Kahl (Bambi and Thumper)
- Eric Larson (Bambi and Thumper)
- Oliver M. Johnston, Jr. (Bambi and Thumper)
[edit] Sequence directors
- James Algar (Bambi and Thumper)
- Bill Roberts (Bambi and Thumper)
- Norman Wright (Bambi and Thumper)
- Sam Armstrong (Bambi and Thumper)
- Paul Satterfield (Bambi and Thumper)
- Graham Heid (Bambi and Thumper)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Walt Disney Collection: Walt's Masterworks — Bambi.
- ^ The Trouble with Bambi: Walt Disney's Bambi and the American Vision of Nature by Ralph H. Lutts: From 'Forest and Conservation History' 36 (October 1992)
- ^ Maurice E. Day, Animator, 90; Drew Deer for Movie 'Bambi': Obituary in the New York Times, published May 19, 1983)
- ^ How They Restored Bambi, Monsters and Critics.
- ^ IGN.
- ^ AFI's 100 Years… 100 Heroes and Villains
- ^ Soundtrack, IMDb.
[edit] External links
- Bambi at the Internet Movie Database
- Bambi at the Big Cartoon DataBase
- Bambi Special Edition DVD Home Page
- "AFI's 100 YEARS… 100 Heroes & Villains" American Film Institute, n.d., Retrieved May 11, 2006.
- David Ansen and Sean Smith, "Oscar Roundtable: Prize Fighters", "Newsweek", February 6, 2006, retrieved April 29, 2006.
- Spoofed by "Cartoons Gone Bad". Thamper is a Thumper spoof.
- "Washington Talk: Briefing; Elks, Parks and Bambi" By Jeff Gerth and Philip Shabecoff, "The New York Times", March 6, 1989, retrieved April 29, 2006.
- Barrier, Michael, Graham Webb, and Hames Ware. "The Moving Drawing Speaks." Funnyworld #18, Summer 1978. pp.21.
- Babbit, Bruce. "Babbitt Urges California Leaders to Help 'Fight Fire With Fire.'" US Dept. of Interior. Washington: GPO, 1998
- Stewart, Doug (June/July 2002, vol. 40 no. 4) "Fires of Life". National Wildlife Federation
- Webb, Graham (2001). The Animated Film Encyclopedia: A Complete Guide to American Shorts, Features, and Sequences, 1900–1979. McFarland and Co.. ISBN 0-7864-0728-X.
- "Fire Wars." Director Kirk Wolfinger. Performers: Matt Snider, Neil Sampson, Bruce Babbit. Nova. May 7, 2002
- The Trouble with Bambi: Walt Disney's Bambi and the American Vision of Nature
