"Bambi" (1942)

This Walt Disney classic, based on the Austrian book "Bambi, A Life in the Woods," continues to delight and devastate in equal measure 70 years after its release. A fawn is born and spends an idyllic first year being instructed in the ways of the woodland by his loving mother. (A list of great cinematic shaming moments for humankind has to include her quiet explanation of a lovely afternoon suddenly gone awry: "Man was in the forest.") Seasons change about mother and son, and then, at the end of his first, long hard winter, Bambi loses his unnamed mother to a hunter. In today's terms, the animation seems incredibly simple but never primitive. There's a delicacy to it that makes you want to frame so many of its famous images: those April droplets raining down on Bambi; the snow whirling around fawn, mother and father; the fire racing across the meadows and woods. Even the relentlessly cute bits, like Flower the skunk and Thumper the rabbit finding love in the springtime, are also just beautiful to look at, and the movie, just oozing with poetry and sincerity, is timeless.

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(Disney)