![]() When he is finally able to stay upright (most of the time), Bambi goes walking in the woods with his mother. Taking a more realistic view of deer behaviour, the father in the book is also conspicuously absent at this point. Salten’s novel underplays this with Bambi’s birth being pretty much a non-event, and leaves us to discover incidentally, like Bambi himself, that he is considered royalty. In the opening of Bambi, every other word seems to be “prince”, and the mass of animals gathering at the birth site hammers home the little deer’s noble lineage. Bambi barely even shrugs at this news, and continues being his usual skippy and curious self. On another visit, they meet up with Friend Hare, who is extremely polite towards him and congratulates his mother on her “fine young prince”. Soon after, Bambi goes to the meadow with his mother, and while there he encounters a grasshopper and a butterfly who seem suspiciously deferential. There is not a sniff of the father anywhere, watching nobly from above or otherwise. While she rambles on about the burden of looking after chicks, Bambi’s mother washes her son, and then allows her eyes to glaze over enough for the bird to get the hint and leave them in peace. Salten versionīambi’s mother gives birth all alone in a thicket, and the only spectator is a magpie who never shuts up. The camera then pans up, revealing a majestic stag stood on an overhanging rock, watching over his family. Only Thumper remains for a moment, and asks a question no one else seemed concerned about – what’s the prince’s actual name? The mother says he is called Bambi, and she then snuggles close to him as they are left in peace. ![]() This seems to take a lot of effort, so he then goes back to sleep.Īfter this energetic display, the other animals leave them to it after being swiftly ushered away by Friend Owl. A particularly playful little rabbit, called Thumper, looks over the baby prince as he tries to stand, but the prince flops over clumsily much to everyone’s amusement. The mother is congratulated, and she gently wakes up her fawn for the benefit of the entourage. The woodland animals all rush to a thicket where a mother doe is resting with her newborn son, and give “oohs” and “aahs” worthy of a firework display, because it seems that the king, whoever he is, doesn’t sow his oats all that often. One still morning, the forest erupts into birdsong at the news that a new prince has been born. Or maybe they decided to make a montage of cute animals doing stuff in the forest. The film was put together during a tumultuous time in world politics too, so perhaps Disney also decided to take a walk on the metaphorical (and literal) wild side. I mention this because the book Bambi: A Life in the Woods is seen by some critics as an allegory of the treatment of Jews in Europe. Due to the author’s lineage, the book was banned by the Nazis in 1936, but fortunately Salten and his family managed to escape to Switzerland before things took another turn for the worse. It’s based on the 1928 novel by Felix Salten (born Siegmund Salzmann), a Jewish Hungarian living in Austria. Otherwise known as “the one where his mum gets shot”, Bambi is pure vintage Disney and was released in 1942. Simba and Mufasa weren’t the first animal royalty to stand nobly atop a cliff.
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