Bambi (film)

Bambi is a 1942 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. The fifth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film was released by RKO Radio Pictures on August 13, 1942, during World War II.

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. The plot centers arond Bambi learning to grow up in the wild after his mother is shot by hunters. For the film, 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 for Best Sound, Best Song for "Love Is a Song" 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 placed third in animation. A direct-to-video midquel titled Bambi II was released in 2006.

Plot
A doe gives birth to a fawn in the 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.

Cast

 * Bobby Stewart as Baby Bambi
 * Donnie Dunagan as Young Bambi
 * Hardie Albright as Adolescent Bambi
 * John Sutherland as Adult Bambi
 * Paula Winslowe as Bambi's Mother and the Pheasant
 * Peter Behn as Young Thumper
 * Tim Davis as Adolescent Thumper and Adolescent Flower
 * Sam Edwards as Adult Thumper
 * Stan Alexander as Young Flower
 * Sterling Holloway as Adult Flower
 * Will Wright as Friend Owl
 * Cammie King as Young Faline
 * Ann Gillis as Adult Faline
 * Fred Shields as Great Prince of the Forest
 * Margaret Lee as Mrs. Rabbit

Production
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 into 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 working 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. However, the original novel, written for an adult audience, was considered too "grim" and "somber" for the young audience Disney was targeting, and with the work required to adapt the novel, Disney put production on hold while it worked on several other works. 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. Finally, on August 17, 1939, production on Bambi began in earnest, though progressed slowly due to changes in the studio personnel, location, and methodology of handling animation at the time. The writing was completed in July 1940, by which time the film's budget had swelled to $858,000.

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. Animators also visited the Los Angeles Zoo. 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. A small zoo was also established at the studio so animators could study other animals, like rabbits, ducks, owls, and skunks at close range.

The famous art direction of Bambi was due to the influence of Tyrus Wong, a former painter who provided eastern and painterly influence to the backgrounds. 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. The usage of the multi-plane camera also added to the realism of the backgrounds.

Although there were no humans in the film, live action footage of humans were 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.

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 equaled less than a second of film versus over thirteen seconds. 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 as World War II loomed.

Although the release of Bambi was an initial financial loss for the studio the animators learned a lot during its production that they'd utilize in future projects. Animators now had a broader spectrum of animation styles, from the wider stylization of Mickey Mouse to the naturalistic look of characters like the stag version of Bambi. They also learned more techniques with the multiplane camera, expanding their knowledge of its usage. Additionally the paint laboratory had developed hundreds of new colors for the production that were used in future films.

Release
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. The Platinum Edition DVD went on moratorium on January 31, 2007. The Masterpiece Version was the first Disney Video to be THX certified.

Reception
Bambi lost money at the box office for its first release, but recouped its considerable cost during the 1947 re-release. Although the film received positive reviews, the timing of the release, during World War II, hurt the film's box office numbers. The film didn't 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. 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." What also hurt box office numbers is 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." The criticism, however, was short-lived, and the financial shortfall of its first release was made up multiple times in the subsequent re-releases.

The death of Bambi's mother is one of the most famous moments in American film history, a moment so upsetting to certain children that they had to be carried sobbing from the theater; the scene was even satirized in a Slappy Squirrel segment on Animaniacs, titled "Bumbie's Mom". For this reason, along with Bambi's brutal fight with a rival buck and the horrific climactic hunting/forest fire sequence, many critics question whether Bambi is suitable for very young audiences. It was not until nearly 40 years later before Disney again featured a parent's death in an animated feature, being Tod's mother in 1981's The Fox and the Hound, which was the 24th Disney animated feature. The Lion King, Disney's 32th animated feature, also featured the death of a parent, being Mufasa. Released in 1994, Lion King would be released 52 years after Bambi and 13 years after The Fox and the Hound.

Today, the film is viewed as a classic. 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.

The off-screen villain "man" has been placed #20 on AFI's List of Heroes and Villains.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney has credited the shooting death of Bambi's mother for his initial interest in animal rights, an example of what has been called the Bambi effect.

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."

Smokey Bear Wildfire Prevention and controvery
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. 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 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.

In March 1989, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr. has criticized the film Bambi for propagating the idea that the best way to manage the forest resources within the U.S. was to fight forest fires. Secretary Lujan Jr. points out that controlled burning is now recognized as more beneficial, and that forest animals, such as Bambi, simply move out of the way of forest fires and, in general, are not killed by them. This is perhaps ironic, but an interesting indicator of changing scientific attitudes, as the U.S. Forest Service originally used Bambi with limited permission from Disney as their charismatic anti-fire mascot before they developed the now-famous Smokey Bear. .Of course, since Bambi was made in 1942, before controlled burnings was theorized, most feel the Secretary of the Interior is over thinking the situation.

Sequel
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 countries like the United States, Japan, Canada, mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it was a theatrical release in some countries like the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Australia and some other European countries.

Copyrights
The copyrights for Bambi 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.