Review #1,073: 'Bambi' (1942)

When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released back in 1937, Walt Disney proved not only that there was vast commercial potential in animation, but that it was also a credible art-form. Disney, the great innovator, toyed with surrealism in Pinocchio and created a sublime blend of music, dance and visual splendour in Fantasia, both released in 1940. With Bambi, Disney observed the quiet balance of the natural world and the troubling emergence of man. While it may contain an ensemble of cutesy talking animals with kids' voices and scenes that will have you saying "awww!" out loud, Bambi is pretty heavy stuff at times.

We begin with the birth of a young prince, the wide-eyed, white-tailed deer Bambi (Donnie Dunagan), and while this opening may ring a bell with anyone who has seen The Lion King (1994) - which is everybody - Bambi is not near-mythical royalty with a destiny laid out for him. He is viewed with extreme curiosity by the other woodland animals, including enthusiastic young rabbit Thumper (Peter Behn), and they giggle as they watch the awkward deer try to stand up. As his protective mother teaches him of the dangers of the forest, his new friends teach him how to leap over fallen trees and ice-skate. Bambi doesn't so much have a plot with a beginning, a middle and an end. Instead, it's simply a portrayal of life, and the discovery, learning and danger we all come to face.

The seasons change along with the film's tone and Bambi's increasing maturity, and the colder it gets, the closer you get to that scene. A few near-misses practically confirm that the doting mother isn't going to be around for long, but the moment still packs a punch even on repeat viewings. Brutally, the incident happens off-camera, and Bambi is informed of her death matter-of-factly by his stoic father. It's an incredibly brave and creative approach, and one that deals with the harshness of real life with incredible maturity. It also sums up Bambi perfectly - observational, unpatronising and thoughtful - but it will certainly warm your heart as well. Disney is frequently criticised for sugar-coating and over-simplifying our world, but I would point anyone in the direction of the corporation's earlier works, particularly Bambi, for elevating animation to a cinematic art-form.


Directed by: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, David Hand, Graham Heid, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Norman Wright
Voices: Hardie Albright, Donnie Dunagan, Paula Winslowe
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #644: 'This Gun for Hire' (1942)

While the 'film noir' genre was still in its earlier stages (back then they were generally referred to simply as melodramas), This Gun For Hire, an exciting, violent thriller from Frank Tuttle, probably shares more thematically with the Pre-Code gangster thrillers. There is no femme fatale to manipulate the film's anti-hero, nor is the lead a hard-bitten private dick or a dead-beat trying to make some cash. In fact, there isn't really a lead at all. It's arguably three inter-linking stories that intertwine and finally come to a head at the climax. Such is the curiosity of This Gun For Hire, one of the finest examples of the B-movie noirs.

Stoic hitman Philip Raven (Alan Ladd) guns down chemist Albert Baker (Frank Ferguson) and his innocent secretary, and takes what he came for - a chemical formula. His employer, the effeminate and cowardly Willard Gates (Laird Cregar), pays Raven in marked bills and then reports the bills stolen from his company. Nightclub entertainer Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) is in town to audition for a nightclub spot owned by Gates, but is pulled aside by a senator hoping to gain information on Gates, who is under investigation for treason. Graham's boyfriend, LAPD detective Michael Crane (Robert Preston) is assigned to the case of Raven and the stolen money, but Raven has plans for revenge.

Although only fourth-billed, this made a star of Alan Ladd. His dead-eyed, cold-blooded gun for hire is what you take away from the film. Like Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947), his character displays such a shocking lack of ethics, quite alarming for its day. His brief moment of humanity comes when he chooses to spare an child who sees his face after a murder. Yet Ladd makes him undeniably compelling, even when he's smacking his girlfriend around for messing with his cat. Veronica Lake, an actress who has yet to completely win me over, does a decent job with a rather unexciting character, performing a couple of nice musical numbers (even though she is lip-synching) while performing magic.

Made during WWII, the overseas menace plays a definite part in the film. While by no means a political thriller, the chemical formula that Raven unwittingly steals is for poison gas, intended to be sold overseas to the highest bidder by Gates' mysterious, wheelchair-bound boss Alvin Brewster (Tully Marshall). America's need for corny patriotism damages the film in the end, used as a tool to allow its mean anti-hero some one-dimensional sympathy. It's my only real problem with the film, which without the ending, could have been up there with the greats of film noir. It's still a damn fine film, as hard-edged as you would want your noirs to be, with a truly enigmatic character (and actor) at its centre.


Directed by: Frank Tuttle
Starring: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #487: 'Mrs. Miniver' (1942)

Directed by German-born American citizen William Wyler, depicting the plight of the British Home Front, Mrs. Miniver swept the boards at the Oscars, collecting five wins including Best Picture. It is now clearly a piece of propaganda film-making, made at the time where the U.S. were edging closer and closer to war, but this doesn't do anything to dampen what is an often gripping, moving and stirring film. Wyler's views are clear as day - American needed to enter the war before the threat of Nazism becomes too powerful to overthrow - and wanted to show the American audience of the stubborn, stiff-upper lipped efforts of its British allies, from the soldiers on the front lines, to the defiance of the women and the elderly at home.

As World War II draws inevitably nearer, middle-class housewife Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) journeys home after shopping to learn that station-master Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers) is naming his potentially prize-winning rose "Mrs. Miniver". Her husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon) has just indulged in an expensive new car and the two patter around admitting to their lavish spending. Their son Vin (Richard Ney) returns home from Oxford and falls in love with Carol (Teresa Wright), grand-daughter of aristocrat Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty). But when war is announced, Vin joins the Air Force, and Clem volunteers to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation.

What is most surprising about Mrs. Miniver is its depiction of Britain. With an American director and a cast made up mostly of American and Canadian actors, the film is alarmingly successful in its realism, and doesn't look out of place amongst the many British films made during this era with similar settings. The cast border on perfection (apart from the slightly hammy Richard Ney), and Pidgeon, Wright, Whitty and Travers all receiving Oscar nominations for the efforts, with Garson winning. They manage to juggle a mixture of middle-class kitchen-sink drama and some naturalistic humour, with some playful scenes managing to alleviate the doom-and-gloom subject matter.

The film is keen to explore themes of social divide, and how this apparent barrier seems to vanish and diminish during wartime. Vin arrives home from his college spouting a new-found enlightenment about his fellow man, and how the wealthy live comfortably in ignorance while the lower-classes suffer, but has nothing to say when challenged as to what he's doing about it by Carol. It is only when he goes to war when he is truly with his fellow man, a revelation shared by the snobbish Lady Beldon (in a powerhouse performance by Dame Whitty) during the village flower show in an extremely moving scene.

A true milestone film, now admitted to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, that President Roosevelt heralded as being as important to the war effort as the soldiers on the ground, as he rushed it straight into theatres shortly after being completed. The film's famous final scene that shows a powerful speech on the country's unity by the Vicar (Henry Wilcoxon - whose brother Robert was killed in the Dunkirk evacuation), was transcribed and translated by Roosevelt and dropped into allied territory as a morale builder, and is now known as the Wilcoxon Speech. Historically important, but a magnificent film in its own right.


Directed by: William Wyler
Starring: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Richard Ney, Henry Travers, Henry Wilcoxon
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie