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“Bambi, A Life in the Woods” was published by Austrian Felix Salten in 1923. It topped bestseller lists in Europe and received an English translation five years later. In 1933 MGM studios purchased the film rights to the book, hoping to make a live-action version. They decided that the logistics for such a production were insurmountable, however, so they sold the rights to Walt Disney in 1937.
Disney loved the book. He was excited to make his first adaptation of a recent work, and had plans to turn the novel into his second feature length animated film. However, he realized the book was too dark for family audiences and shelved the production for a while, taking his time to craft a more suitable script. Thus Disney’s “Bambi” wouldn’t see theater screens until 1942 (after “Dumbo,” which was based on a children’s book I couldn’t find anywhere, so I had to skip it).
Salten wrote his novel for adults. It shows in the text. “Bambi, A Life in the Woods” is a study of the cycle of life, of nature and mortality. It’s also considered one of the earliest novels with a modern environmental message.
Yet for all their supposed differences, the two Bambi’s are actually very similar. In fact, I’d say that of all the Disney movies and their source texts that I’m familiar with (which include many I haven’t gotten to yet) this is the movie where Disney followed his source text the closest.
That’s due to the nature of the book. It’s a contemplative story where things happen slowly, so it’s easy to pick up the pace in the film and still cover all the basics. Disney plays down the darkest parts of Salten’s work and rearranges some of the sadder moments he keeps in, so Bambi faces them closer to adulthood than childhood, but otherwise he’s rather faithful to Salten.
In Salten’s original, winter is nothing like the joyful-playing-on-the-ice moments in “Bambi.” The animals starve and suffer, and while for the first time that actually brings the whole deer community together, the shadows never go away. It is during this first winter that Bambi loses his mother.
Up until this point I cheerfully read “Bambi” before bed, letting it lull me to sleep. Then I read of the first sense of that terrifying smell of Him, of the incomprehensible thunder, of animals falling left and right, of a harrowing chase that never, never ends. I put the book down, turned to my husband, and cried, “How am I supposed to sleep after this? That was intense!”
Disney adapts the transition between Bambi losing his mother and the reveal of his burgeoning adulthood straight out of the book. Both show the now young buck rubbing his new antlers against a tree. Disney just skips Salten’s transition scene, though he does pay homage to it during his autumn montage.
Two leaves hang on a tree. Few others remain. They recall the glorious summer, when they were surrounded by their kin and no one thought of anything but reveling in life and sunlight. Now those days are gone, replaced with the constant creeping knowledge that at any moment it could all end. Their conversation is interrupted in mid-sentence, as one leaf is torn from its place by the wind and sent spiraling to the freezing dirt.
Nature is cold and hard, but it can also be beautiful and light. Animals suffer, is as their lot, but their suffering is infinitely compounded by the machinations of man. That is Salten’s message. He calls for us to consider ourselves not the highest power on this earth, but as one of its many inhabitants. He asks us, between the lines, to have compassion for others in the community of which we are all a part.
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*(This image by Action Studios is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
