Bambi is a towering artistical achievement

Some interesting facts about this film:

Walt and all the animators were so excited by the infinite possibilities for animation and visuals in this film that they often had to remind themselves of not going way off-track.

For example, Walt once suggested a scene of Bambi accidentally destroying an ant hill with a step. The camera would then zoom to this ant hill and show the extremely sophisticated society of ants and how this seemingly insignificant step by Bambi caused severe damage to this whole civilization of ants. The animators spent weeks developing the ants and their civilization, but eventually they discarded it because it has nothing to do with Bambi. I honestly wish that this idea had stayed, I think it's really interesting.

Walt originally intended to have Bambi in the climax encounter an arm from a human corpse, showcasing that man was killed by the fire that he himself created. But test audiences hated this, they thought it was too grotesque, so Walt cut it.

There was also idea for a scene of autumn leaves talking to each other and then falling in the ground, but Walt eventually thought that talking flora was absurd in the context of the film.

Also, he was forced to cut 12 minutes from the film to before final animation to save costs due to his huge financial losses with Pinocchio and Fantasia.

It's interesting to think about the contemporary critical reception of Bambi. Like any film from Disney's Golden Age, Bambi was very different from what Disney had done before. There was no fantasy and this was a grounded story about Bambi growing up and the dangers of man disturbing his and the forest's peace. Critics didn't like this. They complained that Walt, in his search for perfection and realism, had lost sight of the wondrous fantasy that he had created in the previous films. Many animation fans and intellectuals back then also criticized what they perceived a an artistic stifling of animation's potential as a boundless medium for the abstract and fantastic. Many of these same intellectuals also had the same criticisms for cinema as a whole adopting conventional narrative and the talkies. Walt Disney started to lose the admiration of the intellectual crowd while WB's Looney Tunes (legendary animators such as Chuck Jones), MGM shorts and so on became the new champions.

Some aspects of the contemporary vision of Bambi still remained popular among many critics, such as Richard Schickel, but ultimately these contemporary criticisms about the film itself feel really short-sighted nowadays, despite some valid concerns for animation as a whole. Same thing for the talkies being seen as something that would forever stifle the visual imagination of cinema.

I think that I've read that Hayao Miyazaki, perhaps the most revered animator in the last decades, deeply reveres Bambi and also studied a lot the film's visuals too.

But even he is not free of criticisms of "safeness". I guess that as long as animation exists, there will always be a fanatic crowd who thinks that truly amazing animated works need to be something truly surrealist, deeply weird and often abstract. I have nothing against the radical stuff, quite the opposite. And it's totally fine if you far prefers this radical stuff. I'm personally fascinated by the 1973 french film Fantastic Planet. But I don't think that there should be any dictatorship of what top animation should be. There is space for amazing creative uses of limited animation, such as Chuck Jones was master of, and also Disney's multiplane camera that gave cartoons the capacity to have depth. It wasn't an invention from Disney's studios, but they perfect it and it was the most advanced animation tool before computers appeared.

 

Love the movie, also this song:

 

When I was a young'n around 1960, I had yet to see the movie but heard parts of it through one of those records Disney put out. Even without the visuals this sequence scared the bleep out of me and when man was in the forest, well, I was out of the room like a shot!

 

So I gave Bambi another shot and it's really beautiful. The animation is incredible, the music's great and I like the characters. Ultimately though, I still find it boring. The humor in the movie seems to be aimed more at a younger audience and there is not a lot happening. Now, a movie doesn't have to be extremely plot driven. I love the Ghibli movies and a lot of them focus more on atmosphere and characters instead of story. Ultimately, though, the characters in Bambi are extremely flat. Bambi is the lead and he seems more like an avatar for the audience instead of a strong lead character. In a way it reminds me a lot of the earlier Silly Symphony cartoons. They were an animation showcase, contained some humor aimed at younger audiences but don't grab the audience's attraction like most Disney movies do.

Also I somehow always forget that Bambi is a boy and not a girl.

 

I've been rewatching all the original classic Walt films. Haven't seen them in a very long time and only remember the basic plots. Going to watch Bambi this week and looking forward to it. So far, I was very underwhelmed with Snow White and was pretty amazed how dark Pinocchio was in spots - quite a frightening film for a kid's movie. I have Bambi and Lady & The Tramp scheduled to watch this week - looking forward to it.

 

Bambi is a film that's very thin and one-dimensional in its characters and plot, as I said in my first post this thread. I get it's not for everyone and why that turns off some people. Still, the animation, visuals, score (specially the incidental music) and atmosphere alone make it an outstanding achievement. I don't know if you will exactly agree with what I will say now, but I really think that the the thinness of plot and characters means that the movie truly shines at most in the scenes when there is truly no dialogue at all, those often quiet atmospheric moments in which the awe-inspiring visuals and music tell you everything about the wonder of nature and the emotions overall. Like the whole Little April Shower scene (makes me remember The Old Mill, a classic Silly Symphony), the whole climax, the ending, the opening shot of the forest Bambi's mother death and also this (I wish there was a video of this scene with at least 720p quality):



Bambi is easy to accept as a boy. Flower on the other hand...

Overall, these early Disney films were often really more about a bold showcase of animation rather than story. Fantasia is the most clear example of this. It was truly Disney's most experimental age ever. Pinocchio is my favorite and the best of all Walt-era classics in my opinion because it has everything. The bold, gorgeous and strong visuals, animation, music (Gepetto's house and town in which he lives is a work of art and the film takes all the time the viewer needs to contemplate all this beauty and detail, it's never rushed or bombastic like so many modern animated films!) and also great characters and plot. It does everything that Bambi does and what Bambi doesn't.

Snow White's main problem is that today it feels really fillery in some parts (despite Walt ruthlessly cutting some scenes even after they were fully animated, to the despair of the animators, the animator responsible for one deleted scene of the dwarfs eating soup almost left the studio in revolt), specially Snow White and the animals cleaning the dwarfs' house. It was Disney's first feature length film after all. But when the film shines, it really shines. The first 10 minutes are perfect (specially the forest chase), all the scenes with the Evil Queen/Witch are perfect, the dwarfs have plenty of great scenes (such as their work in the mine and the Yodel song), the climax and ending are wonderful. Like Pinocchio, Snow White isn't afraid of being genuinely dark and chilling, it's a really bold film. I love Unshaved Mouse's second review on it, a good analysis of the film's importance, strengths and weaknesses:

Disney (Re)Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse#1: Snow White

 

I don't try to over-analyze it. A lot of classic films kind of suffer when you put them under a microscope -- Bambi is a really, really fine film, I think beyond criticism these days.

I remember back in the 1980s, an LA Times critic wrote a new, negative review of Bambi and slammed it because the female characters in the story were stereotypical and/or were killed. That stirred up a storm of criticism and I think the writer eventually kind of faded away. I think for a film like this, you have to step back, put it in historical context and say, "well, it represents the point of view of 1942, and this is kind of how things were," and know going in it's hard to judge it by modern standards. I think it's a really charming, fun film... but I can see where some modern kids would find it slow-moving compared to (say) a more-recent Pixar release.

 

The reason why I forget that Bambi is a boy is because I almost never rewatch the movie and I associate the name itself more with girls.
You are absolutely right in that it is beautiful and the Little April Shower scene is spectacular. The movie is stunning but the plot can't grab me enough to watch it more often. For me it would work better in shorter bursts, like the Silly Symphonies. I can see what you mean with the scenes with no dialogue. They do work best and really let the animation and wonderful score shine. This is really a movie to watch in HD because even if the plot doesn't grab me as much as other Disney movies, it is an absolute masterclass in animation and atmosphere.

 

Bambi operates on an emotional level. There's very little to stimulate the intellect, no complicated plot to follow or figure out. Just life, death and the journey in between. It's sweetness is key and contrasts quite effectively to the terror of man in the forest.