Walt Disney's
Bambi is, officially, the only movie I ever saw alone with my father. It must have been re-released the theaters when I was ten or eleven. Even though my parents had been taking me to adult movies--rated PG, or M, or R--for years, I found myself drawn to the G-rated
Bambi, probably due to TV commercials for the re-release. Back then, my family used to go to the drive-in a lot. We always went as a team--my mother, my father and I. And I, at least, ALWAYS had a good time.
I remember begging to go see
Bambi back then, but somehow we missed the weekend it was playing at the Northeast Expressway Drive-In. Going to the drive-in was a strictly Friday/Saturday thing for my parents and I. So it looked like I was going to miss seeing
Bambi. And--I clearly remember this--I
cried. I
cried about not seeing
Bambi at the drive-in. So to calm me down, my father--on a Thursday night--took me, on his own, to go see it.
Absolutely starstruck, I was, by the film, from beginning to end. I believe that, though it was an imposition on his time, my father was glad we saw it together, and I like to think the memory of seeing this film together stayed with him until he passed away. As a result of the film's powerful intrinsic quality, and of my very personal relationship with it, I still that it is, nearly 70 years after its release, the single best animated feature that has ever been made, and probably the best that will ever BE made.
I base this conclusion on the quality of its animation, surely. But, most of all, I base it on the intense emotional reactions
Bambi engenders in everyone who sees it. No other film in history has dramatized the beauties and harshness of the wild, and the life within it, better than this one.
It was released in 1942, and was based on the book
Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. It's biography at its most exacting: it tells the story of a doe, Bambi, who is born into royalty as the Great Prince of The Forest. His father is a majestic, many-horned buck--the King of the Forest--and his mother is a tender, nurturing queen. The film follows him from his birth to his ascendance to his father's mantle.
The film is an astonishingly short 70 minutes long, but it packs an amazing punch. Bambi's childhood days, with his exuberant best friend, the rabbit Thumper (memorably voiced by the uncredited Peter Behn) and the shy skunk Flower, are vividly dramatized; we get Bambi's first steps, his first words, and his first friendships. And, in the film's greatest sequence, the "Little April Showers" number, his introduction to the more benign, but nonetheless scary, cruelties of nature.
Upon this opening sequence's emotional climax--of which scads of humans have confessed is their most scarring moviegoing experience (and of which, for the benefit of the many whom I'm sure haven't seen it, I won't talk about now, except to say that it is devastating enough to have proven a problem for Disney, in the 1930s, to ever get made)--we jump to Bambi's adulthood. This part of the film is a bit less charming but, in its portrayal of "the circle of life," is ultimately as moving and makes the story blossom into one that acts a perfect template for another, arguably more popular Disney animated epic called
The Lion King (which owes a ridiculous debt to
Bambi). Just to keep the record straight, the supervising director was David Hand, and he had six other sequence directors, as well as Disney himself, to help; this puts it on an even plane with the largely more ambitious
Fantasia, which had eleven animators working as directors. But it remains that
Bambi is the more resplendent picture.
I can still recall experiencing the "Little April Shower" sequence for the first time. I remember thinking that it reminded me of being at the drive-in when the rain begins to fall, so I immediately experienced a soul-deep connection to it. Now when I watch it again, it astonishes me on so many levels. The animation of the droplets' movements, in all their infinite permutations, hits me first. Then the lyrics, vocal and instrumental arrangement, and music for the sequence--scored by Frank Churchill and worded by Larry Morey--takes me aback me with its gorgeous power. Finally, I am hit on a subliminal level with a wave of empathy for animals of all species, who are forced to endure the callousness of nature and yet almost always emerge ready to face the challenges of a new day of life. I have always been an animal lover, but Bambi made me into more of one, I think, and chiefly because of "Little April Shower." Bookended by cheekily austere clarinet solos, the sequence steps up into, at first, a sweet look at the cooling benefits of a nice rain. But then, in its middle, it balloons into a genuinely frightening examination of a storm, and how it affects life in the forest, and how it traumatizes Bambi in particular, and strengthens his bond with his brave mother--an issue that comes into desperate play later in this extraordinary film.
The song is called "Little April Shower." The music is by Frank Churchill (who composed the film's exuberant score--one of the best in film history), and the lyrics are by Larry Morey. These two artists were nominated for Oscars in 1942, but for another excellent
Bambi number, called "Love is a Song." But, still, when I think of
Bambi, I think of this sequence, and this song, primarily.
Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around
Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To your beautiful sound
Beautiful sound, beautiful sound
Drip, drop, drip, drop
Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
Your pretty music
Will brighten the day
Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You'll come along
With a song right away
Come with your beautiful music
Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around
Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound
Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along
Come along with your pretty little song
Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along
Come along with your pretty little song
Gay little roundelay
Gay little roundelay
Song of the rainy day
Song of the rainy day
How I love to hear your patter
Pretty little pitter patter
Helter skelter when you pelter
Troubles always seem to scatter
Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around
Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound
(Break)
Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around
Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound
Beautiful sound
