Bambi (Disney; RKO-Radio) may not be "the best picture I have ever made, and the best ever to come out of Hollywood" (as Walt Disney claims, but it is in many respects the best of his six full-length cartoon movies. The chief hurdle it has to take is the high standard of its predecessors.
Bambi is the brown-eyed, white-scutted fawn of Felix Salten's somewhat candied forest idyl. Disney animates Bambi from birth to buck. He is an appealing, wonderfully articulated little deer, whose progressive discoveries of rain, snow, ice, the seasons, man, love, death, etc. make a neatly antlered allegory. Bambi's rubber-jointed,...