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When it was first released in 1940, Walt Disney's Pinocchio failed at the box office. And it is quite a strange circumstance, as it was the studio's follow-up to the groundbreaking smash hit Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released only two years previously. Some critical reviews of the film called it even better than its predecessor, and that is mostly the consensus opinion of today: that Pinocchio is indeed a better film than Snow White in almost every way. Its contributions to the art and cinematic form of animation are undeniably enormous, and only a very small number of animated cartoons have come anywhere close to equaling its breathtaking artistry.
It is quite strange that Disney did not follow the success of Snow White with another fairy tale. Many were considered, including Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. But these stories proved to be a challenge to not only the team of artists, but also to Walt himself. It was one of the studio's great animators, Norm Ferguson, who brought the attention of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio to Disney's attention. For story problems and other issues, the studio halted work on Bambi (released in 1942) and production began on Pinocchio.
Carlo Collodi's original story is one of the darkest children's stories ever written, and so Disney was obviously dealing with some very difficult subject matter. In the original story, Pinocchio is a bad kid from the very beginning. He does many bad deeds throughout the course of the first few chapters, and of course it's highly unappealing for a children's cartoon; so major changes were made to the title character that simply worked for the best: he is bright-eyed, curious, easily manipulated, and unbelievably forgetful; most young children should be able to relate to him, and so should adults who remember what it was like to be Pinocchio's age.
It has often been said that Pinocchio is one of the darkest of all Disney animated features. And it is true in ways that are both obvious and subtle; a mixture of both works quite well. Take the scene for example, when Pinocchio is running home and stumbles into Honest John and Gideon for a second time: the Fox and the Cat, pretending to be his friends, see an "illness" in the puppet that ultimately leads to the conclusion that he needs a vacation on Pleasure Island, "where every day is a holiday." Now we know from the scene before that Honest John and Gideon are just in it for the money, but since they are corrupt and greedy, they help out the Coachman anyway, providing him with slaves in the forms of small boys.
The arguments that show the unsubtle darkness of the film come most prominently in two points of the film: after Pinocchio's first performance in Stromboli's puppet show where he makes plenty of money for the puppet master, he says that he is going home and will be back in the morning. At this, Stromboli becomes furious, and locks the puppet in a cage. He says that when Pinocchio grows too old, he will be chopped into firewood. But until then, Stromboli plans to make the puppet his "little wooden goldmine."
The other point at which the animation shows obvious gloom is in the Pleasure Island sequence. And in fact, there is also some subtlety to it as well: when Pinocchio and his new friend Lampwick are having a good time and destroying everything in sight, the latter turns and asks if the puppet likes the place. Pinocchio then turns and says "Yeah! Being bad is a lot of fun, ain't it?" In some instances, that line recalls the original Collodi tale in which the puppet is a bad boy. But then of course comes the infamous transformation sequence, when Lampwick becomes an actual jackass. There is a marvelous shot where the transformation itself is propped up like a silhouette and all the while Lampwick is screaming for his mother. It is an amount of fear and terror that is often unequaled by most of today's horror films.
As an example of the art form of animation, Pinocchio is unsurpassed. It is visually the most impressive and the most gorgeous animated film of all time. It was made at a time before the computer, when animated cels, frames, and backgrounds were all drawn by hand but with such enthusiasm and creativity. The change from the watercolors used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the gouache and oil paintings used in Pinocchio make for a much richer experience, especially when exploited to the nth degree. The only animated films that could quite honestly compete visually with it are the same year's Fantasia (which had some very similar artistry, particularly during "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence) and 1959's Sleeping Beauty (the perfect example of a moving tapestry).
To make animated films of similar feeling and quality today, most animators prominently use computers, which do give a rich quality yes, but the effect is not the same. As technically marvelous as something 1992's Aladdin is, one could easily tell that a good amount of the animation was done with a computer (I say you need look no further than a look at the Cave of Wonders). To be short, the only animated films after 1959 that could compete with Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty are 1994's The Lion King (which does have a lot of computer work on it, but the level of artistry brought to the African savannah is absolutely breathtaking) and perhaps Miyazaki's 1997 Princess Mononoke (in fact, perhaps even much of the Ghibli work, almost all of which is hand-drawn with very little computer work).
Some of the most marvelous animation set pieces in Pinocchio come quite early in the film, specifically on the shots where Geppetto is putting the final features on his little wooden puppet. Taking a look at the scene, the result feels very oily but also quite warm. I could point out many of the other scenes in the picture, but to sum it up: many people have said that the film represents "technically perfect animation." I would most certainly agree.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had been nominated for an Oscar for its score, and earned Walt Disney an Honorary Academy Award. But Pinocchio went a step further, and became the first animated feature to not just win a competitive award, but multiple awards: it won Best Original Score and Best Original Song for the ballad "When You Wish Upon a Star." In many cases, Academy distinctions and other such honors are superfluous and do not mean anything; but in the case of Pinocchio, the music was simply that good. These days however, the soundtrack does not receive nearly the attention it should.
The songs in Pinocchio represent just about the strongest musical in Disney's film canon (only Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast have songs as good as the ones by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington). "When You Wish Upon a Star" of course is the main anthem of The Walt Disney Company; but the other compositions, such as "Give A Little Whistle", "I've Got No Strings", "Little Wooden Head", and "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee" are arguably just as good, if not better. And the score by Paul J. Smith (some parts written by Harline) is an extraordinarily well-written and very underappreciated score. In the score for Pinocchio, the two men cover a range of styles from honky-tonk to romantic and from blues to Broadway.
At the heart of the film however, is the cast of characters. Some of them have very little screen time, but they make such an impression on the audience and such a stake on the plot that it's quite difficult to imagine Pinocchio without them. Take Stromboli, for example: despite appearing in only two scenes, he carves himself a special place among Disney's most evil and threatening villains. He locks Pinocchio in a cage, tells him that he's going to be helpful in making a lot of money, and then as he gets too old, Stromboli plans to turn the puppet into firewood. His last audible line in the film is "Good night, my little wooden goldmine." The filmmakers bring us a reverse Geppetto-type figure, one that exists only to threaten or bring further harm and humiliation to Pinocchio.
Stromboli however, isn't the only great character in the film. Almost every main character in the film is a brilliant little masterpiece, showcasing some of the very best work done by some of Disney's greatest animators. For many of them, it was their first big assignment: Pinocchio himself was done mostly by Milt Kahl, with some contributions done by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston; Jiminy Cricket was handled by Ward Kimball, and this assignment was the only thing that kept him at the Disney Studios after two of his scenes originally planned for Snow White were discarded; Art Babbitt, in one of his last Disney projects, animated Geppetto, whom the animator thought to be his greatest accomplishment; Figaro the Cat and Cleo the Goldfish were both done by Eric Larson, one animator you don't hear a lot about; Honest John and Gideon were both done by Norm Ferguson, another precursor to the Nine Old Men; Stromboli himself was animated by Bill Tytla, who is widely considered to be the greatest animator in the history of Disney animation (Chernabog from Fantasia is more than enough to ensure that); the Coachman was the only character for a feature-length Disney film to be animated by Charles August Nichols, another unsung animator; Lampwick the delinquent is considered to be Fred Moore's finest achievement; the Blue Fairy, one of the film's greatest achievements, was animated by Jack Campbell; and Monstro the Whale (my personal pick for the greatest achievement of character animation in the whole film) was done by Wolfgang Reitherman, who would become a major director later in his career.
These mentions and credits would be pointless though, if the animators did not put forth their greatest efforts. In Pinocchio, the works of these animators remains at least one of their three best (in Reitherman's case, I'd call Monstro his all-time best work). Only a tiny number of characters made after their time (or even after this film) have come anywhere close to equaling the marvelous achievements of the cast of characters, animated and ACTED (which is what character animation is, essentially) with such fussy detail.
The effects animation in Pinocchio is an entirely different matter, but it might well just be the greatest achievement of the whole film: from the fire that Pinocchio cooks up to make Monstro sneeze to the glow whenever the Blue Fairy appears, and from the shadows of Lampwick and Pinocchio to the water splashes made by Monstro himself (the water ripples are perhaps the most beautiful thing drawn by anyone in the Golden Age of Animation), the effects animation by itself represent a level of artistry that cannot be matched by today's computers.
I have yet to speak of the everlasting quality of the story: the durability of the tale of a little puppet's ambition to become a real boy is perhaps the key to everything that makes the film work. In Pinocchio's innocence and naivety, the stage is set for nearly everything else to come to prominence, from Jiminy's efforts to keep the puppet under control to Honest John's scheme to use that same puppet as a cash reward. Pinocchio's promises are always broken by the slightest temptation to slack off or have a good time, and this of course gets him into real trouble. Since this is a fantasy of the highest order, I am able to forgive the film of some its questions (such as how the Blue Fairy delivers the letter explaining where Geppetto, Figaro, and Cleo are).
As much as Pinocchio is about avoiding temptations and doing the right thing, it is also about second chances: time and time again, Pinocchio does wrong and is chastised for it. The Blue Fairy shows up to forgive him of his lies, and Jiminy risks his neck several times to save the puppet from the greatest perils (being made into a slave of either Stromboli's or the Coachman's). But these second chances would be pointless if Pinocchio didn't learn a lesson. He has a line late in the film that is simply marvelous: "I'd rather be smart than be an actor!" He has learned his lesson on the consequences of becoming a star, but when Pleasure Island rolls around, he has yet another lesson to learn: while all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, all play and no work is more than enough for a boy to make a jackass of himself. The combination of second chances, ambition, and learning from mistakes makes Pinocchio one of the most important parables in not just the history of Disney, but also in the history of film literature.
The success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs poured money into the studio's vaults like nobody's business (Sergei Eisenstein himself called it the greatest film ever made). But it is still strange to this day that Pinocchio, such a thing of beauty and a major step up from its predecessor, was an initial failure. These days however, it has literally enshrined itself a place in cinematic history as one of the major achievements in animation as well as the 1940s in general. If Snow White was a sign that animation could make a significant mark on the history of film, Pinocchio broke through and made that claim. It is considered to be Disney's greatest film for many different reasons, and rightly so. It is a thing of visual and poetic beauty that is also an uncontested masterpiece, and certainly one of the greatest films ever made.
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| Additional DVD options | Edition | Discs | Price | New from | Used from |
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January 31, 2017 "Please retry" | 2017 DVD | 1 |
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March 10, 2009 "Please retry" | 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition | 2 | $16.99 | — |
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June 2, 2014 "Please retry" | Special Edition | — | $8.05 | $8.80 |
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Pinocchio - Limited Edition vs. 70th Anniversary Edition
After renting the Pinocchio 70th Anniversary edition, I came to Amazon to purchase my own copy. I was extremely saddened when I read Jon Olivan's dire revue (the very first review and supposedly the most helpful): "BEWARE PURISTS--this Digitally Restored version TAMPERED WITH ORIGINAL ARTWORK'S COLOR PALETTE!!!"So I purchased the Limited Issue instead (used) from Amazon, because I wanted to see it as close to how Walt envisioned it as I could find. After watching it, I could hardly believe how bad the transfer was compared to the 70th Anniversary edition. The colors were dull and the detail was gone and there were scratches and other artifacts. I then bought the 70th Anniversary edition. It is far superior.Here is a web page which shows side-by-side comparisons of a frame from the cage scene mentioned in the review:[...]I also do not believe the 70th Anniversary edition is the "Thomas Kinkade-ing" of Pinocchio as another reviewer wrote. And it is NOT garish-it has lots of subtle shading. I am not a fan of Thomas Kinkade. I am a fan of all things Disney, and this version is spectacular. It is the very essence of Disney. You will be charmed from the first moment it starts.Don't let some 'expert' discourage you from getting this DVD. It's too bad his review is all the way at the top. By the way, Pinocchio was locked in Stromboli's birdcage and not Geppetto's birdcage as the 'expert' wrote.If you don't own the 70th Anniversary edition, get it while you can. It is a masterpiece.
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