“Bambi” runs 70 minutes. It has no villain with a face, no song-and-dance number, and no comic sidekick built for a franchise. It is also one of the best films Walt Disney ever released, and the years have not softened its hardest scene.
Trailer, via American Film Institute.
A Fawn, a Rabbit, and a Skunk Named Flower
The story is simple and it is meant to be. A doe gives birth to a male fawn, Bambi, who will one day take the position of Great Prince of the Forest. He grows up attached to his mother, learns to walk and speak with help from an eager cottontail rabbit named Thumper, and befriends a young skunk he mistakenly calls “Flower” — who is so flattered he keeps the name. A female fawn, Faline, rounds out the group.
The film was directed by David Hand with a team of six sequence directors, written by Perce Pearce, Chuck Couch, Vernon Stallings, Mel Shaw, Ralph Wright and Carl Fallberg, and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is loosely based on Felix Salten’s 1923 novel “Bambi, a Life in the Woods.”
Disney made one decision here that matters more than any other. Salten’s Bambi was a roe deer, native to Europe. Disney based the character on a mule deer from Arrowhead, California, after illustrator Maurice “Jake” Day argued that the mule deer had large, “mule-like” ears and were more common to western North America, while the white-tailed deer was more recognized throughout the United States. The film’s animals are American.
Man Fires His Gun
The plot moves from season to season, and it does not protect its audience. In a meadow, Bambi briefly sees the Great Prince, the oldest and most experienced stag. The Great Prince spots the human hunter — “Man,” as the animals call him — and rushes down to get everyone to safety. Bambi is separated from his mother and escorted back to her by the Great Prince just as Man fires.
Then winter. Bambi and Thumper play in the snow while Flower hibernates. One day Bambi’s mother takes him to find food, Man shows up again, and she is shot and killed. The Great Prince leads the orphaned fawn home and reveals that he is his father.
That is the hinge of the film, and it lands without a single frame of the hunter. The camera stays on the fawn. The restraint is the point.
Friend Owl and the Word “Twitterpated”
The following year, Bambi has matured into a young buck and his friends have entered adulthood. Friend Owl, voiced by Will Wright, warns the trio about becoming “twitterpated” — that they will eventually fall in love. They view romance with scorn. Thumper and Flower soon meet their matches anyway.
The cast is almost entirely uncredited. Donnie Dunagan voices young Bambi, Peter Behn young Thumper, Stan Alexander young Flower, Cammie King young Faline. Hardie Albright and Ann Gillis take the adolescent roles, and Sterling Holloway voices adult Flower.
The film earned three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound for Sam Slyfield, Best Song for “Love Is a Song” sung by Donald Novis, and Original Music Score.
What the Record Shows
| Year | Recognition |
|---|---|
| 1942 | Released by RKO Radio Pictures; three Academy Award nominations |
| 2008 | American Film Institute’s “10 Top 10” ranks Bambi third in animation |
| 2011 | Selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress |
The AFI ranking came from a poll of over 1,500 people in the creative community. The National Film Registry designation in December 2011 called the film “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant.”
The tagline promises “one of the world’s greatest love stories.” That is marketing, and it undersells the film. Bambi is not a love story. It is a film about a child learning that the forest will take things from him, and that the adults around him will not explain why.
What holds up is the structure. The film gives you the mother, the meadow, the snow, the warning — and then it takes the mother away in a single gunshot off screen. Seventy minutes is short for that much grief, and Bambi never wastes a minute of it.
The weak point is the back half. Once Bambi reaches adulthood, the film shifts into courtship comedy with Friend Owl’s “twitterpated” speech, and the tone loosens. It is charming, but it is a step down from what came before.
None of that undoes the early stretch. Bambi trusts silence in a way few animated films have since, and by this paper’s measure it remains the high mark of the form.
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