The Disney Canon: Bambi

Drip, drip, drop...

Hindsight, like nostalgia, is a funny thing. You can tend to have a fixed image in your head of what a movie is, or what it is supposed to be, and then when you revisit it, you realize that the fixed image in your head is only part of the story. I think most people have a fixed image in their head when they think of the 1942 film Bambi, and that fixed image centers around the traumatic off-screen death of the title character’s mother by the unseen Man. It is the quintessential Disney death, for many reasons. It is the death of a parent, and for all the various bits of action that occur in Disney films, the death does not occur on camera. Though the trope often arises in Disney films of a character who seems to be dead but is revived somehow, this isn’t one of those times.

The image of Bambi’s mother dying — or perhaps more accurately, the image of Bambi being told gruffly that she “can’t be with” him anymore by the stag whose presence as his father is oblique before this moment — is the most charged and heartbreaking in the film. But Bambi is an adventure of the seasons, with weather dictating what level of joy the deer, skunks, hares, and other animals of the forest can derive from a given day. The story of Bambi may have some recognizable touchstones with previous Disney films; even the very sad Dumbo can’t go as far as this film does, allowing Jumbo, Jr. to reunite happily with his mother after her circus-cage time is up. But just as it’s true of the other Golden Age titles, Bambi may have some familiar tropes or engage in recognizable cinematic stereotypes while still creating a distinctive and singular story.

The Golden Age of Disney Animation vanished after Bambi because of the onslaught of the Second World War in the United States. (America’s involvement in the war had started in between Dumbo and Bambi, and the latter film’s box office was arguably lessened because of the lack of overseas box office as well as less interest in the States during wartime.) But just as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would inspire future princess stories like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, and Pinocchio inspired films like Peter Pan, Bambi is a major film in the Disney canon, not just for its majestic images and primal emotions, but because without it, we do not have a story about…well, about the great circle of life.