Hard Times with Bambi: Walt's Struggle to Get It Right

DisneyFilmProject has an interesting premise: its creator, Ryan Kilpatrick, plans to watch and review every Disney film ever made, including the shorts, in chronological order. He just hit Bambi (chronologically, I mean, not with his car).

When you watch Bambi, it seems that the animators drew each frame effortlessly, and that Walt's vision for the movie was simple, pure, and firm. Think again.

Ryan reveals that Bambi was a struggle from start to finish. Walt was so concerned over a 'realistic portrayal' of the animals that he brought live deer into the studio and kept them in pens near the animators (a refreshing change from keeping the animators themselves in pens).

The animators (and Walt himself) struggled with how much realism the audience would accept and how much cute, folksy humor they would expect. The book upon which Bambi was based took a grim view of nature; the typical Disney audience, however, wanted to see animals rolling in fields of wildflowers, not scrabbling the frozen ground for seeds. How the animators resolved this conflict makes for fascinating history.

Much of Ryan's information is drawn from the book, Walt Disney's Bambi, by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, currently out-of-stock on Amazon but available from numerous marketplace sellers.

(Ryan has a review of the book on his site.)