Favorite screenplays: Bambi


I shouldn’t even be talking about Bambi here.

Check this out: Bambi is 70 minutes long, has only one clearly-defined act break, and has a protagonist who is not only passive, but who wants nothing definable or concrete.  It has no visible antagonist and absolutely, positively, not the slightest rumor of a plot.  It breaks every rule regarding what a compelling cinematic narrative is supposed to be. 

Who was the perpetrator of this heresy?  What weird, artsy, pretentious, avant-garde smartass dared to make a movie with no plot and a passive protagonist?  Was it Godard?  Bunuel?  Brakhage?  No, it was Walt Disney, the man whose name is now synonymous with toothless, benign, formulaic "family entertainment."  Walt Disney.  Disney’s two features previous to Bambi were the 2 1/2-hour salute to classical music, Fantasia, and the gorgeous 61-minute parable Dumbo.  Don’t let people tell you that Walt Disney was some kind of reactionary, conservative fuddy-duddy peddling colorful fantasy.  At the top of his game, Walt Disney was the most exciting, most experimental, most daring moviemaker alive.  Bambi is the peak of his art.

Do me a favor: go to any studio in the land, hell, go to the Disney studio, and pitch to them a plotless movie chronicling the first year of the life of a passive deer, and tell me what happens.

WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT?  I’ve seen Bambi at least ten times, and I can identify no through-line.  There is nothing Bambi desires at the beginning of the narrative that he eventually gets or does not get.  He doesn’t need to kill a shark, he doesn’t need to get off Tatooine, he is not compelled to venture into the deserts of Arabia.  Instead, Bambi slowly tiptoes into the world, consistently awed, baffled and frightened of everything he happens upon.  As the end of the movie rolls around, he eventually gains the experience and wisdom he needs to turn from victim to protector, but he was never seeking to be a protector, nor was he seeking to avoid becoming a protector.  Things just kind of "happen" to Bambi, and he reacts.  Sometimes his reactions are naive and clumsy, and eventually his reactions become wise and sure-footed.  But he seeks out nothing; everything comes to him, from the butterfly who lands on his tail to the doe who eventually gives birth to his children.

None of this should work.  And yet, Bambi remains one of the most charming, most beguiling, most arresting movies ever made. 

Why?  How?  How does it do that?  How does it work?

Here’s a little personal experience:

I was seven when I first saw Bambi.  I remember the evening quite well.  I enjoyed the movie immensely.  I was shocked when Bambi’s mother died (spoiler alert: Bambi’s mother dies), I was thrilled when Bambi fought the dogs, I was frightened when the forest caught fire, I was calmed when life went on and renewed itself.  At the end of the movie, Bambi’s children are born, and the mother looks up the hill, to the bluff where Bambi and his father stand.  And Bambi and his father looked at each other, and then the father lowered his head and walked away, into the woods, presumably forever.

That image stuck in my head.  I knew that I had experienced something very profound, but I had no idea what it meant.  I remember crouching on the floor of the bathroom later that night, my head between my knees, staring at the tile and wondering, in my seven-year-old mind, just what the hell I’d just witnessed.

I saw the movie again at 14.  Back in the days before home video, Disney re-leased all their movies every seven years.  Why not?  They never got old, and there was, literally, a new audience for them every seven years.  So perfect.  I liked Bambi okay enough at 14, but it didn’t enthrall like it did when I was 7.  I saw it again when I was 21, and admired the animation and the charm, but found nothing particularly compelling about it.

Then, I saw it again when I was 28.  It was my day off from work, and I spent the day hopping from movie to movie.  I saw Scrooged, then went to the theater next door to watch Bambi.  I wasn’t expecting much, I just wanted to check in with good ol’ Bambi, watch him go through his paces, see how he was doing.

The movie started.  There were the familiar Disney woodland creatures, the birds and mice and squirrels, all dashing to see the young new "prince of the forest."  Everyone gathered around the mother and her sleeping child, and Bambi woke up and yawned, and all the birds and rodents laughed gently.  And suddenly, in a flash, I sat up in my chair, electrified, and thought: "Oh my God.  This movie isn’t about a deer.  THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT ME."

Of course, that seems like the dumbest thing in the world to say now, but at the time I hadn’t really put together the idea of a cinematic metaphor: I knew that I was supposed to "identify" with a protagonist in some way or other, but somehow, in spite all the delight I’d derived from watching movies, it had never occurred to me that a cartoon deer could have anything to do with my life.  Back in that theater in 1988, watching a 45-year-old movie I’d seen three times before, I sat forward, my eyes agog, hanging on every incident, thrilled and stunned, marveling at the craft and balance of the piece, because, without plot, emphasis or assertion, Bambi was gently, quietly, lovingly telling the story of life itself.

Alas, I am out of time for the evening, so I will begin my analysis proper next.

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Comments

21 Responses to “Favorite screenplays: Bambi”
  1. laminator_x says:

    “At the top of his game, Walt Disney was the most exciting, most experimental, most daring moviemaker alive. Bambi is the peak of his art.

    I sat forward, my eyes agog, hanging on every incident, thrilled and stunned, marveling at the craft and balance of the piece, because, without plot, emphasis or assertion, Bambi was gently, quietly, lovingly telling the story of life itself.”

    I think they were very much aiming to recapture that magic with the Lion King. I had a conversation in early 1993 with one of the animators who had worked on Aladdin, and he was deeply enthused about this “Lion King” project where they were going to forgo the musical numbers, dial-back the zany sidekicks, play straight to the ur-myth and really make some art.

    As we all know, the blinked and made Jungle Emperor:The Musical instead. Just the same, it speaks to an awareness at least somewhere within the machine that Bambi is the kind of vision and artistry that made them great.

  2. numbereleven says:

    Wow. I can’t wait for the next part of this. I never, ever thought of the lack of plot and motivation in Bambi as a GOOD THING. You have opened my eyes a bit… please, go on. (=

  3. If you listen very carefully, you can probably hear me running around my house cheering way off in the distance.

    I’m going to mostly hold off on my own thoughts until you get started with the actual analysis. My anticipation levels are off the charts.

    One of my favorite fun facts about the making of Bambi is that one of the animators on the film was Retta Scott, the first woman to receive screen credit as an animator in a Disney film. (That’s how Wikipedia puts it anyway. Truth be told, I don’t know if there was another woman who worked as an animator at Disney before her and never got credit for it.) And it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? There are so many cute and delicate little creatures in Bambi that it’s not surprising to learn there was a woman doing some of the animation. Probably one of Thumper’s sisters or that adorable little mouse that washes its face with a dewdrop, right?

    Try the vicious hunting dogs that bedevil the adult Bambi and Faline. Doubly awesome: Disney’s first woman animator took as her first major assignment a cene that was anything but “feminine.”

    • Todd says:

      There was actually a piece in Vanity Fair about the army of women who worked on Snow White and received no credit. I don’t know if they were animators or just painters.

      • A very interesting article indeed, about the women who were collectively known as the “Ink and Paint Girls.” They were responsible for tracing the animators’ drawings onto celluloid and painting in the colors on the reverse side, not the animation itself. It was crucial and challenging work nonetheless.

  4. I’m looking forward to your analysis of Bambi.

    I’m also curious to hear what you think about Bambi II: The Great Prince. But, you know, don’t hurt yourself driving the knives in. 🙂

  5. tohoscope says:

    “At the top of his game, Walt Disney was the most exciting, most experimental, most daring moviemaker alive.” Well said.

    I can’t wait for your analysis.

  6. 55seddel says:

    Ok you’ve written a check now to break down Disney films and I, your listener, am gonna cash it in. Would you entertain a dual comparitive analysis of Oliver & Co. and The Lion King? What would compel you to do so? These two films seem to scream at me as bookends to a Silver Era of a Post-Walt Disney, Disney. If you study the formula they both use feline protagonists to enact a story that is a blatant ripoff of an English writer. I would find myself with a very piqed interest at the prospect of what you would derive from them after I read your breakdown of Bambi. Thank you.

    • Todd says:

      I’ve actually never seen Oliver & Co. I’ve seen The Lion King many times. I don’t consider either of them Walt Disney movies, since Disney died during the making of The Jungle Book. But there’s no reason why they couldn’t be analyzed as animated movies. (They actually were both made under the direction of Jeffrey Katzenberg, who ran the Disney studio for a while, but that’s another story.)

      • 55seddel says:

        True yet it is kindof a lesser version of studying a post Stan Lee Marvel Comics. The interesting choices of a studio that takes ownership of a name that is a ghost remnant of it’s founder would make for a good read. As for Oliver you’ve missed out on a quiet gem. You would get lots of interesting parrellels with it and TLK

  7. ndgmtlcd says:

    I have the impression that _Bambi_ is the film that John Boorman was trying to remake or imitate when he wrote, produced and directed _Zardoz_. It was a total failure.

  8. swan_tower says:

    Do me a favor: go to any studio in the land, hell, go to the Disney studio, and pitch to them a plotless movie chronicling the first year of the life of a passive deer, and tell me what happens.

    I occasionally wonder at the number of classic works you could plug into that sentence — film, novel, etc. Try to submit something like The Lord of the Rings to a publisher today, and the slush reader won’t get past the first two pages (and even if they did, the editor would bounce it right back). And yet these works still find new audiences that love them, decades after their original debut, despite their seemingly obvious structural flaws.

  9. squidattack says:

    Bambi

    Your analyses always ring true to me, and Bambi, in my opinion, one of the most startling and beautiful movies of all time. Not to mention its incredible visuals (I’m a cartoon nerd in that I like to make cartoon art). I’m thrilled that you’re going to be writing about it, and look forward to it! Thank you!