Before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was even released, Disney had several other feature ideas in the pipeline. Pinocchio beat out stories like Bambi and Peter Pan to become the second Disney animated feature based on what the studio thought it could do best given the state of animation at the time. After the monumental success of Snow White, the animation team was eager to top themselves. When the film was not coming along as well as anticipated, Walt scrapped months of work to go back to the drawing board. With a few tweaks to the original Italian fable, the picture was up in running and ready for release in 1939.
Though it was not the runaway financial success of its predecessor (World War II was starting up in Europe) and cost even more to make, Pinocchio has withstood the test of time to become another classic Disney film and a benchmark for animation. It was also critically well received, winning Academy Awards for Best Original Song ("When You Wish Upon A Star") and Best Original Score. This 70 year old film pioneered effects that animation still relies upon today. It was a labor of love by animators working at the top of their game. The animators clearly learned a lot making Snow White, and were eager to show off their skills.
Even 70 years later, Pinocchio holds up incredibly well on all fronts. The basic story of the movie follows Pinocchio, a wooden puppet brought to life by a fairy, as he tries to become a real boy. He inevitably makes mistakes involving evil puppet masters and Pleasure Island, but eventually proves himself by saving his creator/father, Geppetto, from the gigantic whale Monstro. When I was a child, I had no idea I was watching a 50 year old piece of entertainment. Looking at it now, clearly it was made in a different time simply because they would not get away with saying "jackass" or having kids smoke cigars in modern Disney films. I remember thinking the scenes where the boys get turned into donkeys wer particularly scary and I had a negative association with San Francisco's Treasure Island for some reason. The story is entertaining, though it is paced much different than modern films. It is easily divided into sections: Pinocchio is created and brought to life; Pinocchio gets tricked into being part of Stromboli's puppet show; Pinocchio goes to Pleasure Island; Pinocchio rescues Geppetto and becomes a real boy. The episodic nature works as well as it does in many classic fairy tales to keep things moving. Again, this was never one of my favorites, but re-watching it recently made me love it more than ever. Overall, this is an impressive film because of how well each element stands out on its own in telling this classic story.
The character work in Pinocchio is even more ambitious than Snow White; the characters seem much more fleshed out this time around. Pinocchio is sweet, naive, and easy to root for (a marked change from the original story). Geppetto is a great father figure (and helps continue/establish the Disney tradition of the Disney lead having only one or no parent at all). His warmth can nearly be felt through the screen. Jiminy Cricket is the perfect narrator and a less than perfect conscience, yet he remains endearing enough that his reward at the end of the film is also a great moment. He is like the Genie in Aladdin, a modern character in a past setting. Figaro and Cleo continue the cute animal element in Disney animation, and they are both highly entertaining characters of their own. Honest John and Gideon are interesting characters because they are anthropomorphic animals (a fox and a cat, respectively and a first for Disney feature animation). They serve to usher Pinocchio through his various trials and they also bring some great gags to the story. How can there be a cat as a pet and as an upright character? Well, why don't you just ask Pluto and Goofy? Stromboli is one of my favorite Disney villains ever, even though he does not get too much screen time. Something about him is so fun to watch. The Coachman is also felt genuinely menacing as he lead the boys to Pleasure Island. Lampwick is also hilarious as the Pinocchio's trouble-making young friend. The Blue Fairy beautiful, and feels like one of the most direct ties to the character style of Snow White. Last but not least, is Monstro, who's final act scene steals the whole film. It seems to come out of left field when you learn that Geppetto managed to get swallowed by a whale, but it really pays off. The voice work done in this film is also impressive. Many of the voices in the film were contemporary stars of the age, but none feel out of place when taken out of that context. They bring the characters to life without drawing attention to themselves. This film was extremely ambitious with the amount of characters involved, and it really paid off particularly because of the animation standard the artists were all hitting and some very memorable voice work.
The animation in Pinocchio is clearly something different than Snow White. It is also not quite similar to most the shorts Disney was releasing. Pinocchio manages to find that perfect balance between the sort of realism Snow White offered and the caricature of many of their shorts. Geppetto and Stromboli's movement feels so alive. The way the captured the feeling of a wooden puppet coming to life is magical. There are so many great character bits that fill this film that it is almost hard to remember how impressive all the other elements of the animation are. The effects work being done in Pinocchio is insane. These animators must have been blazing new trails daily. There is one scene that zooms in on and pans around through the town that is so subtle that it might be missed, but once you notice it, it will catch your eye every time. All the underwater work is also hard to beat. The background work feels more similar to Snow White than any other element because of artists like Gustav Tenngren working on that "Old World" European style design. The detail on the backgrounds, which becomes especially apparent on Blu-Ray, is beautiful. The world really comes to life when you see things like Geppetto's wood carved clocks all going off together. The animators managed to one up themselves quite well with this one.
The music in Pinocchio is legendary, primarily because of the song, "When You Wish Upon a Star." This song has become such a cultural touchstone that I honestly thought it might have originated before the film elsewhere. There are a lot of other fun songs including my childhood favorite, "I've Got No Strings, " "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (An Actor's Life for Me)," and "Give a Little Whistle." The score to the film is also well done. Disney had some of the best film musicians around in the 1930s, and Pinocchio might be the best evidence of that in existence, as well as a monument for Disney's overall supremacy in animation overall.
Watching Pinocchio recently has really awakened a love of the film inside me. Depending on my upcoming reexaminations of Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, it might even be my favorite of the "Golden Age" of Disney. Though it isn't as strictly entertaining to a modern audience in some ways (judging once again by my friends reactions), it more than makes up for that gap with the startling quality of the animation, some genuinely classic characters, and one of the best finales ever in a Disney feature. Recently the characters of Pinocchio and Geppetto have been more familiar to me from the parts they play in the current comic book series, Fables, but after a few viewings I can safely say this film offers the most enduring images of these characters in my mind once again. Pinocchio is definitely a worthy successor to Snow White, and a classic in its own right.
Up next is Fantasia, Disney's ambitious animated ode to a lot of classical music
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