The Animation Freak. Bambi.
A doe gives birth to a fawn named Bambi, who will one day take over the position of Great Prince of the Forest, a title currently held by Bambi's father, who guards the woodland creatures against the dangers of hunters. The fawn is quickly befriended by an eager, energetic rabbit named Thumper, who helps to teach him to walk and speak. Bambi grows up very attached to his mother, with whom he spends most of his time. He soon makes other friends, including a young skunk named Flower and a female fawn named Faline. Curious and inquisitive, Bambi frequently asks about the world around him and is cautioned about the dangers of life as a forest creature by his loving mother. One day out in a meadow, Bambi briefly sees The Great Prince but does not realize that he is his father. As the Great Prince wanders uphill, he discovers the human hunter named "Man" by all the animals is coming and rushes down to the meadow to get everyone to safety. Bambi is briefly separated from his mother during that time but is escorted to her by the Great Prince as the three of them make it back in the forest just as Man fires his gun.
During Bambi's first winter, he and Thumper play in the snow while Flower hibernates. One day his mother takes him along to find food when Man shows up again. As they escape, his mother is shot and killed by the hunter, leaving the little fawn mournful and alone. Taking pity on his abandoned son, the Great Prince leads Bambi home as he reveals to him that he is his father. Next year, Bambi has matured into a young stag, and his childhood friends have also entered young adulthood. They are warned of "twitterpation" by Friend Owl and that they will eventually fall in love, although the trio views the concept of romance with scorn. However, Thumper and Flower soon encounter their beautiful romantic counterparts and abandon their former thoughts on love. Bambi himself encounters Faline as a beautiful doe. However, their courtship is quickly interrupted and challenged by a belligerent older stag named Ronno, who attempts to force Faline away from Bambi. Bambi successfully manages to defeat Ronno in battle and earn the rights to the doe's affections.
Bambi is awakened afterward by the smell of smoke; he follows it and discovers it leads to a hunter camp. His father warns Bambi that Man has returned with more hunters. Although Bambi is separated from Faline in the turmoil and searches for her along the way, the two flee to safety. He soon finds her cornered by Man's vicious hunting dogs, which he manages to ward off. Bambi escapes them and is shot by Man, but survives. Meanwhile, at the "Man's" camp, their campfire suddenly spreads into the forest, resulting in a wildfire from which the forest residents flee in fear. Bambi, his father, Faline, and the forest animals manage to reach shelter on a riverbank. The following spring, Faline gives birth to twins under Bambi's watchful eye as the new Great Prince of the Forest.
In 1933, Sidney Franklin, a producer and director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, purchased the film rights to Felix Salten's novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods, intending to adapt it as a live-action film. After years of experimentation, he eventually decided that it would be too difficult to make such a film and he sold the film rights to Walt Disney in April 1937. Disney began work on crafting an animated adaptation immediately, intending it to be the company's second feature-length animated film and their first to be based on a specific, recent work. However, the original novel was written for an adult audience, and was considered too "grim" and "somber" for a regular light-hearted Disney film. The artists also discovered that it would be challenging to animate deer realistically. These difficulties resulted in Disney putting production on hold while the studio worked on several other projects. In 1938, Disney assigned Perce Pearce and Carl Fallberg to work on the film's storyboards, but attention was soon drawn away as the studio began working on Fantasia. Finally, on August 17, 1939, production on Bambi began in earnest, but progressed slowly owing to changes in the studio personnel, location, and methodology of handling animation at the time.
There were many interpretations of the story. As Mel Shaw claimed
Originally the film was intended to have six individual bunny characters, similar to the dwarfs in Snow White. However Perce Pearce suggested that they could instead have five generic rabbits and one rabbit with a different color than the rest, with one tooth, would have a very distinct personality. This character later became known as Thumper.
There originally was a brief shot in the scene where Bambi's mother dies of her jumping over a log and getting shot by a man. Larry Morey, however, felt the scene was too dramatic, and that it was emotional enough to justify having her death occurring off screen. Walt Disney was also eager to show the man burned to death by his fire that he inadvertently started, but this was discarded when it was decided not to show the man at all. There was also a scene involving two autumn leaves conversing like an old married couple before parting ways and falling to the ground, but Disney found that talking flora did not work in the context of the film, and instead a visual metaphor of two realistic leaves falling to the ground was used instead. Disney and his story team also developed the characters consisting of a squirrel and a chipmunk that were to be a comic duo reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy. However, after years of experimentation, Walt felt that the story should focus on the three principal characters: Bambi, Thumper and Flower. The squirrel and chipmunk make only brief appearances in the final film.
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