Dan Webster Despite Changes In Attitudes, ‘Bambi’ Still Appeals To All Ages

To Walt Disney, motherhood was a precious commodity to be championed in movies.

Take “Bambi” as an example.

Now, remember: Attitudes 55 years ago, when “Bambi” first hit the nation’s movie screens, were much less jaded than today. As a culture, we’ve experienced a traditional love-hate relationship with mother. Stepmothers, in particular (remember “Hansel and Gretel”? remember “Snow White”?), have been held responsible for countless youthful nightmares.

But birth mothers, too, regularly have been cast as the cause of misfortune for their innocent offspring. Remember “Carrie”? Remember “Gypsy”? Remember “Ma Barker’s Killer Brood”? “Bambi,” though, is different.

In the Disney movie, which was based on a book by German writer Felix Salten, the young deer’s mommy is represented as goodness personified. And then she dies.

More to the point, she is murdered.

For many of us, one of the most chilling statements in all film is delivered in “Bambi,” and mother speaks it: “Man,” she cautions, “is in the forest.”

To which she might have added, “And my days are numbered.”

Just as such popular children’s films as “The Wizard of Oz” and Disney’s “Snow White” have been blamed for causing younger viewers to cry, “Bambi” has been criticized over the years for its depiction of how an adorable character loses his mother.

Welcome to real life, kids.

Of course, this harsh introduction to approaching adulthood is not the only thing that made this 1942 release something unique.

For one thing, it was the first Disney animated film to feature an all-animal cast. And the studio worked for seven long years to develop and create not only the film’s storyline, but also its look.

Based on Salten’s 1923 book, which was titled “Bambi: Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde” (or “Bambi: A Life in the Woods”), “Bambi” originally was more closely tied to a real - if anthropomorphicized - view of life.

To Disneyfy things, story editors pared the number of characters to a couple of cute friends, essentially Flower the skunk, Thumper the rabbit, Faline the female deer, Friend Owl and Bambi’s rival, Ronno.

As Oliver Johnston, a 43-year Disney veteran and one of the original “Bambi” animators, said, “Our mission was to make the characters believable rather than realistic.”

Not everyone turned out to be a fan of the result.

“Technically, ‘Bambi’ has a great deal to recommend it,” film historian Christopher Finch wrote in his study, “The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms.”

But, Finch continued, “This film aims for a kind of naturalism which falls outside the borders of fantasy and fairy tale - it presents an owl on friendly terms with baby rabbits who, in the real forest, would be his victims, and we are asked to believe in deer that speak the language and share the emotions of the humans who are supposed to be their enemies. It is very difficult to reconcile these contradictions.”

Poppycock, I say. And so do many of those directly involved in the creation of film animation.

Dave Pruiksma, a Disney animator who created Mrs. Potts of “Beauty and the Beast,” the Sultan in “Aladdin,” Flit the hummingbird in “Pocahontas” and the gargoyles Victor and Hugo in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” recalls in “Bambi” press materials the first time he saw the film.

“I was in high school,” he said. “I took my young niece to see it and was really so startled that it moved me to tears.”

Doug Ball, a background artist whose most recent projects included “The Lion King” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” echoes Pruiksma’s sentiments.

“I was very young when I first saw it and I remember being overwhelmed by it,” he said. “We lived in the country in Colorado, and I loved the film so much that I went home and named one of the baby rabbits we had caught Thumper.”

Many of us whose formative years comprised the 1950s have similar memories. I first saw “Bambi” at a drive-in, during one the film’s rare (in those days) re-releases, and I can still remember the fear that I felt over the great fire that ravaged the forest and threatened all the cuddly creatures I had come to care for.

Strangely enough, I can’t remember feeling anything particularly alarming about the death of Bambi’s mother. Maybe that’s because mine was sitting right there in the front seat next to my dad.

Man might be in the forest, but Mom was in the car. And, as it turns out, she would be for years to come.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo