Bambi Bambi Disney DVD 1942 / Color / 1:37 flat full frame/ 70 min. / Street Date March 1, 2004 / 29.99 Art Direction: Thomas H. Codrick, Robert C. Cormack, Lloyd Harting, David Hilberman, John Hubley, Dick Kelsey, McLaren Stewart, Al Zinnen Original Music Edward Plumb, Frank Churchill Written by Larry Morey, Perce Pearce from a novel by Felix Salten Produced by Walt Disney Directed by David Hand
	Reviewed by Glenn Erickson One the best feature films from the Walt Disney Studios, Bambi transcends the genre of cartoons with cute forest animals. Taken from a serious novel about man's destructive role in nature's cycle of life, it is at once an enchanting film for children and a wondrous evocation of universal experiences: The miracle of birth, the wonder of childhood and youth, and the fearsome experience of the coming of age. Disney's beloved Bambi has been beautifully refurbished for DVD. A couple of Disney's earlier releases "repainted" the studio's original animation but this carefully nuanced job retains minor artwork and camera imperfections that should remain part of the show.  2 Digital cleanup was fifty years away when this classic was made and the animation artists that put years into Bambi created a hand-crafted piece of art that computers will never equal. Synopsis: The newborn fawn Bambi finds that all the animals are his friends, especially Thumper and a skunk he names Flower. When he's old enough to go to the meadow his mother must constantly be on the lookout for the dreaded intruder known as Man. Bambi meets and is perplexed by the young doe Faline. His first winter is a time of adolescent fun in the snow and on the frozen ice, but when Bambi becomes a yearling there are bitter life lessons to be learned. Felix Salten's book Bambi is a chastening experience and one of the world's first popular novels with an environmental theme. After reading it in junior high school I knew I'd never be a hunter. In the original book Bambi has a idealistic friend, a young deer who decides that because he'd once encountered some friendly humans, the idea that Man is dangerous is a myth. To prove his point the deer goes out into the clearing to greet some hunters and is promptly shot dead. Disney used every ounce of his production muscle and story smarts to retain the theme of Man as a menace to nature, without resorting to overly ironic violence or verbal messages. The deer don't discuss Man, Man just is. The animals of the forest are admittedly a rather unrealistically cooperative lot - that owl never picks off a baby bunny for lunch - but none of them voices a philosophy beyond practical advice in the here and now, such as "Run!" Instead, the visuals carry almost everything and our own knowledge of the realities of life fills in the blanks. The story is reduced to a few simple scenes. The animals of the forest are transient beings. Just like humans, they're mostly unaware of the awesome grandeur around them. Disney's artists create a familiar forest world that is wondrously alive with leaves borne on the wind and winter's snows that carpet the ground. We experience it all along with the baby fawn Bambi, as if reliving our own childhoods. There are plenty of reasons to question the anthropomorphic animal universe of Disney's animated films as bestowing qualities on animals that they don't have. The cute critters of Bambi are of course not realistic, but their animated similarities to humans enable possibilities of personal identification that don't exist with "human" characters - which in drama are also artificial creations. The baby animals were partially modeled after human babies, creating a heightened adore-ability. We identify with Bambi and want to protect him because he's so vulnerable and because he isn't ready to face the cruel world beyond his mother's protection. His best pal thumper has a full range of winning kid qualities: enthusiasm that gets him into trouble, spirit that wins him friends and a mischievous streak that's irresistible. These creatures embody the fragile innocence in life. Bambi also captures the magic of young love, knowingly acknowledging that among children, the girls are always more hip to what's happening. Faline is perhaps a little older than Bambi but probably not by much. I remember being impressed by fourth grade girls when they were sometimes right up front with their honest affection. I was too shy to respond but at least I wasn't a piece of wood like most boys my age. Bambi accomplishes the miracle of making us re-experience innocence (the little we were afforded) with a pleasant nostalgia. I wonder how many of those fourth grade Jezebels are now grandmothers? I remember some college students criticizing Bambi along political lines, saying it reinforced a patriarchal society with the silent, god-like Alpha-male buck lording it over a forest full of worshipful does. Maybe they have a point, but if we stick to the birds and the bees and the deer in the woods, Bambi isn't warping anybody's consciousness. In reality, the King of the Forest would be Bambi's paterfamilias and the mate for all the does, a rank won by intimidating all comers in combat. Fairness, equality and enlightenment are fine, but if we're to draw parallels with human behavior, it's easy to see that a goodly number of impressionable females still flock to a few desirable males, whether they be high school jocks or hotshots with a corner office. Bambi is also Disney's best movie about dealing with death. I remember hearing that a cousin ten years older than I was supposedly traumatized in the scene ... you can guess what happens, it's a famous scene. At this time ol' Walt was considerably gutsier than in his later years and the tough content in his movies would probably land him in hot water with child psychologists - just let them loose on the implications of all of Disney's "rump humor" sometime. Dumbo pulled the heartstrings of mother love but Bambi told the brutal truth with only the distance of a nature allegory to soften the blow. The cycles of birth, love, seasons and death in Bambi have an almost mystical feel helped by the reverential music score and its songs to the changes in nature. To be frank, the movie can help a young person understand that all of their confused feelings and experiences aren't necessarily unique - that at any given moment there are millions of people going through all of those universally- experienced stages. To have a child and think only in terms of your own joy is one thing, but to become a parent and realize one is now part of an ageless race of creatures who see love and innocence in their offspring, that's another thing entirely. Bambi has that kind of magic.  1 Disney's DVD of Bambi is almost transparently beautiful, with a restored visual luster that brings out the charm of each forest scene and impressive multi-plane moving shot, but without giving the impression that edge-enhancers or grain-gobbling software has been let loose on an animation classic. I'm used to seeing the film as it looks in the grainy and dull trailer that is included as an extra. The contrast is like eyewash. The limited-edition disc has extras that run the gamut from obvious kiddie games to serious featurettes on the 1942 production and its place in the Disney canon. A multi-part "making of Bambi" docu efficiently covers a lot of unfamiliar material. We're introduced to the child vocal talent used in the film and shown how nature and anatomy studies give the forest animals a heightened realism. It meshes well with the anthropomorphosed eyes and facial expressions. Ever seen a real deer up close? They aren't very expressive. A familiar docu piece on the multi-plane camera is here, along with interesting exclusive content, including a dramatized reading & visual presentation of transcripts from story conferences with Walt and his top staff. It plays a lot better than it sounds. A couple of deleted and alternate scenes are shown in storyboard form, as is the entire 1937 cartoon The Old Mill, which we're told was a tryout for the multi-plane camera. Good pieces on the restoration and Disney's artwork archive will interest many viewers. A "DisneyPedia" feature about the real animals depicted in Bambi is a useful helper to let tots know that the wilderness isn't full of cuddly squeeze toys - those suckers have teeth and hooves, Cindy Lou. It reminds me a bit of a hilarious "See and Say" Mattel toy commercial from the early 1980s. It explained that city kids had lost their country roots by showing a little boy pointing at a cow in a barnyard and happily saying, "Doggie!" On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Bambi rates: Movie: Excellent + Video: Excellent Sound: Excellent (Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish, Disney Home Theater Mix (Dolby Digital 5.1), French) Supplements: Featurettes: The Making of "Bambi", Restoring Bambi, Disney Time Capsule: 1942, The Art of "Bambi", "Tricks of the Trade" excerpt, Inside Walt's Story Meetings, Two Deleted Scenes. The Old Mill animated short Forest Adventure Game, Virtual Forest, DisneyPedia: Bambi's Forest Friends, Disney Storytime: Thumper Goes Exploring, What's Your Season Personality Profile Game Packaging: Two discs in Keep case in card sleeve. Reviewed: February 27, 2005 Footnote: 1. Personal connection: Paul Satterfield and Norman Wright are on the Bambi credits as sequence directors. I learned to cut TV commercials with Norman's son Peter and met him on a number of occasions. When I needed an elaborate optical made for a UCLA student film I took my cut negatives to Paul Satterfield, who in 1975 was still running a little optical printer on Seward street. He liked the idea that I had shot the elements on a pin registered Mitchell camera and did my job literally overnight, fixing some errors in my counts and improving my simple concept. I remember that Satterfield charged me all of $60 and waved goodbye like I was a good boy going off to kindergarten. I didn't learn who he was until years later. My film was no classic but it got me my first effects job with Doug Trumbull's people. It's funny - the people you foolishly think owe you something, and the people who you know you owe plenty. Be nice to the next mixed up kid who walks in, as it's really you. Return 2. It's Snow White I'm talking about here ... either noise reduction or some kind of digital cleanup also removed brush strokes and evened out colors ... my opinion, and that of several other who saw it. We compared it to a laser disc. I personally haven't seen other discs that I've heard complaints about ... Dumbo and Peter Pan looked great to me. Return [Savant Main Page] [Savant Links] [Article Index] [Review Index] [Savant 5 Year Report] DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson Advertise With Us Review Staff | About DVD Talk | Newsletter Subscribe | Join DVD Talk Forum Copyright © DVDTalk.com All rights reserved | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use