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Bambi (1942) More at IMDbPro »

This timegap between this scenes/chapters can be found in Felix Saltens book "Bambi - A life in the woods", but Salten didn't mention a specific time. In the special-documentation "Inside Walt's story meetings" on the 2005 DVD-Edition of "Bambi" there was mentioned at least one year, but in their book "Walt Disney's Bambi - The Story and the Film" (ISBN 1-55670-160-8), Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of the leading animators of "Bambi", mentioned three years: "Winter had come and gone three times and now once again the last patches of snow had melted reluctandly away." (Chapter "Spring", Page 61).

Data in different publications differs a lot, commonly from 5 to 7 years, but if you start from the very beginning, it took almost 9 years: The very first work was not done by Walt Disney, but already in 1933 by MGM director Sidney Franklin, who had bought the film rights to the story and planned to put it into a live action picture. Sydney searched for the right voices and recorded Margaret Sullivan and Victor Jory as the two last leaves and tested several outstanding voices for the Great Prince, but Franklin realized early that the spirit of the book cannot be captured that way as a live action film and so he contacted Walt Disney to realize the movie as a feature film. Disney starts to concentrate on "Bambi" in December 1936, and in April 1937 the contracts were set. Franklin was engaged to collaborate on the film for three and a half years. (finally it took far more than three and a half years to finish the picture, but friendship between Franklin and Disney prevailed beyond the limits of the contract. Disney expressed his thanks to Franklin with the line "To Sidney A. Franklin - our sincere appreciation for the inspiring collaboration" in the opening credits of "Bambi"). Early in 1937 Walt chose Perce Pearce and Larry Morey to head up the story crew for "Bambi". Although "Bambi" was discussed as early as 1936, actual groups of story men were not assigned to the picture until the Autumn of 1938, when three distinct story groups were put on the project.

First animation: January 1940

First animation clean-up work: June 1940

First effects animation: July 1940

First inking and painting: August 1940

First scene sent to camera: September 1940

Final animation: May 1941

Final clean-up work: August 1941

Final effects animation: October 1941

Final inking and painting: January 1942

Final scene in camera: February 1942

First test-screening (today called a sneak-preview) was on February 28, 1942 in a theater in Pomona, some forty miles east of Los Angeles.

World premier was on August, 8, 1942 in London.

US-premier followed on August, 13, 1942 in the "Radio Music City Hall" of New York.

The simple (but wrong) answer is, that Walt Disney never shows blood in his movies. The correct answer is, that the hunters are chiefly hunting for small game, like pheasants, rodents, quails etc. and armed with shotguns, not rifles (see the hits on the ground, the branches and the poor pheasant, that was killed, that showing typical shotgun hits). When Bambi jumps over the chasm, a trigger happy hunter shots a shotgun from the distance on him (listen to the dull sound of the shot that indicates a shotgun, not a rifle). Small game will not be killed by the injuries of the shots, but the multiple hits of the shots on the skin causing a deadly breakdown of the complete nervous system, but bigger animals like deer will be only stunned for a short time when they are hit by shotgun shots.

There is really no proof for this claim. No scene in "Bambi" gives us a sure hint on 1942, or even on a specific era in wich the movie was set. The film can be set in 1942, or 1923 (when Salten's book was published) or even in 1900 or 2008. The only very subtle hint is the sound of the rifles that can be heared, they sounds like modern cartridge-rifles with smokeless powder, they sound not like old blackpowder guns, so the movie must be set at least after approx. 1890, because the first commercial hunting-cartridge loaded with smokeless powder was the .30-30 Winchester, the first rifle for this cartridge was the Winchester 94, invented in 1894.

Many animal rights activists trying to abuse the movie for their goals, and many hunters condemned "Bambi" as a anti hunting movie too. But Felix Salten, author of the book "Bambi - a life in the woods", upon which the movie was based, was an avid hunter too. He got the idea for "Bambi" during one of his hunting tours. In Salten's book are legal hunters and poachers described too. The book's story was set in an Austrian forest which is far more under human influence than the wild and remote US forest in the movie. In the movie, however, humans are only called "Man." There is no proof, that they are really legal hunters. In spite that the American Film Institute ranked "Man" in his "100 Greatest Heroes and Villains"-List on Rank 20 on the villains-list, it was never Walt Disney's goal to condemn hunters as evil. In almost every movie the villain has a goal, like to take over a kingdom, to rule the world, to get immortal etc., but "Man" in "Bambi" was quite different: "Man" simply is. He was depicted like a natural disaster for the animals - almost akin to an earthquake, a hurricane, or a volcano.