Disney| The Golden Age and it's Relationship With Nature

Yet another live action Disney film has been released into the world, Snow White (2025), with (unsurprisingly) negative reactions. Disney seems to either be flopping with uninspired generic stories or wallowing in its past, remaking its recognisable IPs of iconic fairy tales, princess stories and hits from the 1990s into sludge for the masses. Snow White seems to have a clear lack of passion from anyone involved (other than Rachel Zegler it seems.) While the company has gone through many stages over the last 101 years of its animation history with many ups and downs, there is one era that has continued to be my favourite throughout my life, The Golden Age. This era stretches from 1937 with the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Bambi’s release in 1942, and is five films long, including Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Dumbo (1941). Though I am partial to the wartime era of the mid to late 40s and many other films in Disney's 60+ film catalogue, there is a core theme running through these early films, where they maintain tone and outstanding animation. There seems to be a consistent  theme  of nature and its relationship to everything else around it– humans, animals, and the personified souls of nature itself– conveyed through lovingly animated sequences.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

The most overt observation of this theme is in the first feature length animated film ever, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. After the titular princess is chased through the woods by the Huntsman, Snow White is joined by many of the woodland creatures who, after singing ‘With a Smile and a Song’, brings all creatures together and is thereby guided to the Dwarfs’ cottage, where she cleans with the help of the animals (‘Whistle While You Work’ is one of the most iconic scenes in a film full of them.) Snow White was the first of many Disney princesses to have an unspoken and beloved connection to nature. There are no words exchanged or spells cast on the animals to compel them to help Snow White; just her motherly, warm singing that invites the creatures of the woods, and in return they rush to the Dwarfs for help when Snow White is about to be killed by the Evil Witch later on in the plot. The film displays a symbiote link between the creatures and Snow White. Everything seems alive and energetic in the film, like the unexplainable bond between Snow White and the animals, or the darker sides to nature, like the perfectly timed lightning strike that plummets the Evil Witch to her doom, and the patient vultures waiting for her demise after the fall. 

Fantasia (1940)

Disney’s third animated feature is the company’s most experimental and expressionistic work. It has been championed as one of the best animated films ever, and I couldn't agree more. In any of their other films since, Disney has not gotten close to the unique tone, atmosphere, and artistic displays offered throughout the many breathtaking scenes of Fantasia.. There are eight sequences in the two hour runtime, and at least six of them have a relation to nature in one form or another; some in their own abstract way, others being the main narrative drive of that sequence. “The Rite of Spring” sequence displays the evolution of life on earth from microscopic, single-celled organisms to the death of the dinosaurs. A beautifully poetic range of emotions that the early Mesozoic era has to offer; violent volcanic chaos, animalistic brutalism from monstrous creatures, and a slow fade out shows the earth as a dry ball in the midst of space.

Fantasia is able to balance stories like this as well as the more abstract ones, like the “Nutcracker Suite” sequence, where the change of the seasons are expressed through dancing flowers and fairies of the forests. There is an inherent satisfaction watching the falling of golden, autumn leaves synching up with “Waltz of the Flowers”, or the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” wherein the flowers peacefully descend on top of water, creating ripples leading to flowers dancing with large dress-like petals. All of these scenes create an angelic and peaceful atmosphere, and have a trancelike energy that lulls the audience. Nature is seen as something transcendent; no words are spoken except in the wrap-around segments, therefore it is a visual spectacle, aided with classic music, that washes over you. Scenes in this film feel like what happens in nature when we are not watching, what goes on in our garden when it is nighttime, or in the depths of the ocean where it’s too deep to see. Fantasia is a timeless classic that links the natural world to the fantasy world, and makes them exist together seamlessly.

Bambi (1941)

Bambi is nature incarnate– the love, the harshness, the beauty, the sun rising and spring coming after the sadness of the winter. Everyone remembers watching the death of Bambi’s mother as a child. It seems like every generation's rite of passage with a children's movie. The film has the benefit of not having any humans, which is quite striking. It is merely the animals and the rumours of ‘Man’ hunting in the woods which sends dread throughout the  meadow. One of the key players behind the jaw dropping visuals of Bambi’s forest is Tyrus Wong, a background artist who developed a style that incorporates an expressionistic wash of colours. It's dreamy and unique for anything that Disney had done at the time. One of the most memorable sequences is the “Little April Shower" scene in which the rain comes down on the forest and all of the infant animals run for cover with their parents. It's a very sweet, loving scene, similar to the “Baby Mine” sequence in Dumbo (where all of the animals are comforted by parents as Dumbo can only hold onto his mother’s trunk  through the cold bars of a cage.). Both scenes show the motherly love that animals have for each other, whether in the wild or in the slavery of the circus.

Disney has explored many topics over the years, but the central theme of nature and our intertwined relationship with it has become one of the most important and profoundly executed. The simplistic plotting and memorable visual sequences do not hit the audience members over the head, but instead artfully express themes showing the ethereal grasp that the natural world has on everyone and everything in it, capturing the soul of which mother nature possesses and imbues the world. 

Written by Michael Tasker | IG: @thegoldenecstasy | LB: Haelcim