Walt Disney’s Bambi, Blu-ray 2-Disc Diamond Edition (1942/2011)
Studio: Disney [3/1/11]
Video: 4:3 but also 16:9 with Disney View, 1080p HD color
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, Restored original mono soundtrack, French or Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, English ESL, French, Spanish
Extras: Intro by Diane Disney Miller, “Inside Walt’s Story Meetings” – interactive edition, Two deleted scenes, Deleted song, Interactive galleries, Disney’s Second Screen, Game: Disney Big Book of Knowledge, Classic DVD extras, Fast Play
Length: 70 minutes
Rating: *****
This was the first Disney film where one of the characters dies, and although it happens to Bambi’s mother off-screen, many who saw the movie as a child still recall how upsetting that was to them. (What upset me more as child were the threatening trees in another Disney movie, can’t recall which one.) Anyway, this is a beautiful restoration of another classic Disney animation which stands up extremely well artistically and in every other category – though for some odd reason a few parts that were in the original are edited out – such as the song the owl sings about “twitterpatting.”
The national consciousness during the dark days of 1942 undoubtedly affected the thinking of Disney’s filmmakers in including the traumatic death of Bambi’s mother as part of this beloved coming-of-age story. The dark moments for the forest creatures – including the forest fire – are all caused by human beings, who are never actually shown – only the results of their cruelty and irresponsibility. This film set new standards artistically, which came about due to the problem of detailed backgrounds of the forest conflicting with having the characters as the main focus. It was solved by a Chinese-American artist on the Disney staff who came up with the wonderful sketchy, minimalist forest backgrounds which only suggested the trees and plants.
The various animal characters are in some ways even more interesting than Bambi himself. Thumper the rabbit was a favorite of mine as a kid. Then there is the wise old owl and the skunk which Bambi mistakenly calls Flower. The music track supports the film successfully. Some of the sections – such as the rain drops falling on the leaves – reminded me of Disney’s Fantasia in the careful synchronization of music and image.
The new interactive featurette has actors reading actual excerpts from carefully-notated records of the story meetings at Disney Studios, and they frequently offer a further exploration via, for example, showing a complete earlier Disney cartoon in which one of the characters made use of some animation that could be applied to a character in Bambi. In one case, the way Pluto on ice had been handled was adapted for the scene with Bambi on ice. There are many other bonus extras carried over from the previous DVD release. The original mono soundtrack is amazingly workable in lossy surround, and with the Disney View complementary artwork filling up the spaces to the left and right – making it fit the 16:9 screen – Bambi really doesn’t really appear dated. It’s right up there with the finest classic Disney animations of this general period – Pinocchio, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty.
— John Sunier
