After the hugely successful release of Snow White Disney was set up to
become a veritable animation super factory. Walt Disney had expanded the
animation department by hundreds and was
fixing to move everyone into a brand new building in Burbank that would
feature tighter organization, new
technology, and expanded resources....like, I kid you not, a hot tub.
The rights for a long list of future animated films were acquired and
production started right away on what Disney hoped would be the studios
next monster success.
But this productive vision of the future
never happened. The onset of World War II crippled a large segment of
Disney’s market (Europe). Thus the studios
second film, Pinocchio, which cost even more than the ambitious Snow
White, would turn out to be a major financial flop that the studio would
not actually even begin to recover from until the 50s. Couple this with
an animators strike in 1941 that drastically raised the cost of
animation and forced the studio to fire nearly half its animators and
you soon see why Disney eventually stopped producing the kinds of films
they once did in the 30s and 40s.
Despite the fact that
Pinocchio was a financial failure it was still highly praised at the
time of its release and it has come to be regarded by most establishment
critics as the greatest Disney movie ever made and possibly the
greatest animated movie ever made. While I disagree with the
establishment a lot, as with Robin Hood or the Emperor’s New Groove, I
am not going to disagree with them about Pinocchio. It is a veritable
masterpiece of movie making and my pick for the single greatest Disney
movie of all time....the standard by which all other Disney movies are judged.
Pinocchio is an adaptation of an Italian
(that’s pronounced ‘eye-talian’) writer’s, Carlo Collodi, popular novel
about a little wooden boy who is magically brought to life by a fairy as
a reward for the goodness of a lonely old toy maker named Gepetto and
who subsequently embarks on a perilous journey of moral growth in the
hopes that one day he will become a REAL little boy. In order to do
this, the fairy stipulates, he must first prove himself worthy. How does
he do that? By obeying his conscience of course, a little
anthropomorphic bug named Jimminy Cricket (which, as you know, is a term
meant to stand in for Jesus Christ when swearing).
But the
world is a dangerous place and evil lurks like a beast around every
corner and thus Pinocchio is hornswoggled into disobeying his “father”,
Geppeto, and finds himself in a series of physically and spiritually
dangerous situations. Thankfully, Jimminy Cricket is always there to be
his guide and, after a great deal of sacrifice and repentance, Pinocchio
eventually finds his way back home to the loving and merciful father
that had been fervently seeking him out all along.
Does any of
this sound familiar to you or remind you of anything else? Good, then
you probably realize why I love this movie so much. It is just the best
moral, crypto-Christian allegory I have ever seen. Even better than
Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore. I especially love the social commentary on
“Pleasure Island” where a life of base, self-indulgence makes young
boys, literally, turn into jackasses.
Yet Pinocchio isn’t just
clever moralizing, of the highest order and magnitude, it’s also a
superbly crafted movie. Story wise it is one of the most exciting Disney
films ever made. I sort of get exhausted
just thinking about how much Pinocchio, and Geppeto, have to go through
before they are finally reunited. Of course they do, duh, and it’s a
warm, buttery Disney fairytale ending that is well earned and highly
satisfying. You also gotta love how they dealt with the giant, man
eating whale (the most unscientifically unsound and yet most incredibly
bad ass depiction of a whale ever filmed)!
The characters are
great too. Pinocchio may be a little wooden (get it?) but the addition
of Jimminy Cricket really helps the film a lot. Cliff Edwards, one of
your grandpa’s favorite singers, did his voice and he really brought a
great deal of warmth and old-school colloquial American charm to the
character....to such a degree that I pretty much associate the word
“wholesome” with “Jimminy Cricket” and “whittling wood on the porch with
kin”. Of course he’s also a smooth singer and he sings the legendary
“When You Wish Upon a Star” in the course of the film, which AFI has
declared to be in the top 10 greatest songs used in a film ever. I love
that song and so do you, unless you’re some kind of vampire.
The other characters are great too. Stramboli might be the scariest
Disney villain. I crap you not he promises to chop Pinocchio into wood,
“when he gets old and useless”, a line that still haunts my darkest
nightmares and which serves as my earliest exposure to the concept of
“euthanasia”. Geppeto is the celluloid embodiment of “kind hearted old
man” and you just can’t wait for the poor guy to get back together with
his animate little wooden boy. How disappointing it must be for you to
wake up one night to discover that one of the toys you’ve just made has
come to life to be your “son” only to have that same toy run away to
join the theatre the very next day. How disappointing or
disconcerting....I guess I’d probably have myself committed, on second
thought.
Animation wise, Pinocchio is a masterpiece, second to
none in the entire Disney canon. Just look at the use of the multi-plane
camera, that Ub Iwerks (co-creator of Mickey) invented, in this film’s
opening sequence or in the shots of the village and then compare it to
anything being produced today or yesterday and I think that you will be
astonished by the beauty and the detail of Pinocchio, a movie that was
released well over 70 years ago in an age where everything had to be painstakingly
done by hand and up hill through the snow both ways. Disney must have
chained his animators to their desks for weeks just to get two minutes
of such great animation. The soundtrack, unsurprisingly, is also very
good.
It’s old, it’s not as accessible as the Princess stuff or
the less allegorical, more straight forward story lines of the other
Disney movies but Pinocchio is an incredibly beautiful and meaningful
movie that transcends the limits that animation sometimes places on our
ability to connect the story to reality. Fantastical as it all is, you
will care when that crazy old Italian toy maker finally embraces a
little boy who had up until that shining moment been in danger of being
consumed by termites and as serious as it all sounds, if not a little
odd and scary at times, it’s a movie that literally everyone from the
youngest child to the oldest child at heart can love and appreciate
together. But not heartless monsters, their eyes cannot tolerate the
radiant glow that gloriously emanates from the film over and against
their shadowy existence. Such creatures are to be pitied.
I give it a perfect 5 blue fairies
