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Pinocchio (1940 film)

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Pinocchio is the second animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney and was originally released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on February 7, 1940. Based on the book Pinocchio: Tale of a Puppet by Carlo Collodi, it was made in response to the enormous success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The plot of the film involves a wooden puppet being brought to life by a blue fairy, who tells him he can become a real boy if he proves himself "brave, truthful, and unselfish". Thus begin the puppet's adventures to become a real boy, which involve many encounters with a host of unsavory characters.

The film was adapted by Aurelius Battaglia, William Cottrell, Otto Englander, Erdman Penner, Joseph Sabo, Ted Sears, and Webb Smith from Collodi's book. The production was supervised by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske, and the film's sequences were directed by Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, and Bill Roberts.

Characters

History

Production

The plan for the original film was considerably different from what was released. Numerous characters and plot points, many of which came from the original novel, were used in early drafts. Producer Walt Disney was displeased with the work that was being done and called a halt to the project midway into production so that the concept could be rethought and the characters redesigned.

Originally, Pinocchio was to be depicted as a Charlie McCarthy-esque wise guy, equally as rambunctious and sarcastic as the puppet in the original novel (similar to later Disney characters Timon, Philoctetes and Iago). He looked exactly like a real wooden puppet with, among other things, a long pointed nose, a peaked cap, and bare wooden hands. But Walt found that no one could really sympathize with such a character and so the designers had to redesign the puppet as much as possible. Eventually, they revised the puppet to make him look more like a real boy, with, among other things, a child's Tyrolean hat, and regular, 5-fingered hands with Mickey Mouse-type gloves on them. The only parts of him that still looked more or less like a puppet were his arms and legs.

Additionally, it was at this stage that the character of the cricket was expanded. Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards) became central to the story. Originally the cricket wasn't even in the film. Once added, he was depicted as an actual (that is, less anthropomorphized) cricket with toothed legs and waving anntenae. But again Walt wanted someone more likable, so Ward Kimball conjured up "a little man with no ears. That was the only thing about him that was like an insect."

Mel Blanc (most famous for voicing many of the characters in Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons), was hired to perform the voice of Gideon the Cat, who was Foulfellow the Fox's sidekick. However, it was eventually decided for Gideon to be mute (just like Dopey, whose whimsical, Harpo Marx-style persona made him one of Snow White's most comic and popular characters). All of Blanc's recorded dialogue in this film was subsequently deleted, save for a solitary hiccup, which was heard three times in the film.

Many of these ideas were later used in Geppetto (2000)

The influential abstract animator Oskar Fischinger contributed to the effects animation of the Blue Fairy's wand.

Film critic Leonard Maltin would later write that "with Pinocchio, Disney reached not only the height of his powers, but the apex of what many critics consider to be the realm of the animated cartoon.

Reception

Pinocchio was not commercially successful when first released, and Disney only recouped $1.9 million against a $2.3 million budget. The film achieved some success at the American box office, but was not able to profit, due its poor performance in Europe. The timing of the film's release was a factor, with World War II cutting off European markets. Although the United States had not yet entered the war, the mood of the times may have meant less interest among Americans in seeing fantasy stories as they were in the days of Snow White. It also lacked the romance element that had proven popular in Snow White. To add insult to injury, Paolo Lorenzini, nephew of the original story's author, had beseeched the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture to charge Disney with slander for portraying the Italian puppet "so he easily could be mistaken for an American."

Nevertheless, there were positive reactions to the movie as well. Archer Winsten, who had criticized Snow White, wrote: "The faults that were in Snow White no longer exist. In writing of Pinocchio, you are limited only by your own power of expressing enthusiasm." Also, despite the poor timing of the release, the film did do well both critically and at the box office in the United States. Jiminy Cricket's song, "When You Wish Upon a Star," became a major hit and is still identified with the film, and later as a fanfare for The Walt Disney Company itself. Pinocchio also won the Academy Award for Best Song and the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. In 1994, Pinocchio was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In 2005, Time.com named it one of the 100 best movies of the last 80 years. Many film historians consider this to be the film that most closely approaches technical perfection of all the Disney animated features. Pinocchio earned $84,254,167 at the box office.

Re-releases: Theatrical & home video

With the re-release of Snow White in 1944 came the tradition of re-releasing Disney films every seven to ten years. Pinocchio has been theatrically re-released in 1945, 1954, 1962, 1971, 1978, 1984, and 1992. The 1992 re-issue was digitally restored by cleaning and removing scratches from the original negatives one frame at a time, eliminating soundtrack distortions, and revitalizing the color. The film also received four video releases, being a hot-seller in 1985, a re-master in 1986, 1993, and 1999. A Platinum Edition DVD is scheduled for March 2009.

United States theatrical release history

February 7, 1940 (original release)

Worldwide release dates

Country Date
Brazil February 26, 1940
Argentina March 13, 1940
U.K. May 21, 1940
Australia October 24, 1940
Sweden February 3, 1941
Canada October 10, 1941
Eritrea December 3, 1941
Finland January 31, 1943
Spain February 7, 1944
France May 22, 1946
Belgium, Netherlands June 13, 1946
Norway September 5, 1946
Hong Kong December 19, 1946
Italy November 5, 1947
Poland February 7, 1949
Denmark May 25, 1950
West Germany March 23, 1951
Austria April 1, 1952
Japan May 17, 1952
Philippines October 7, 1952
Lebanon March 25, 1967
Saudi Arabia March 13, 1971
Kuwait October 6, 1985

Pinocchio home video release history

  • July 16, 1985 (VHS, Betamax and Laserdisc, Classics edition)
  • October 14, 1986 (VHS and Betamax, remastered Classics edition)
  • March 26, 1993 (VHS and Laserdisc, restored Classics edition)
  • April 16, 1995 (VHS, Spanish-dubbed Clásicos edition)
  • October 26, 1999 (60th Anniversary Edition, as well as a Limited Issue DVD)

Crew

Animation direction

Songs

Songs in film

The songs in Pinocchio were composed by Leigh Harline, Ned Washington and Frank Churchill. Paul J. Smith composed the incidental music score.

On Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic, this includes When You Wish upon a Star on the blue disc, Give a Little Whistle on the purple disc, and I've Got No Strings on the orange disc. And on Disney's Greatest Hits, this also includes When You Wish upon a Star on another blue disc, I've Got No Strings on the green disc, and Give a Little Whistle on the red disc.

Songs written for film but not used

  • "I'm a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow" - Jiminy Cricket (this song eventually showed up in Fun and Fancy Free)
  • "As I Was Saying To the Duchess" - J. Worthington Foulfellow (this line is spoken briefly by Foulfellow in the film, however)
  • "Three Cheers For Anything" - Lampwick; Pinocchio; Alexander; Other Boys
  • "Monstro the Whale" - Chorus

Notes

External links



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Last updated on Wednesday March 12, 2008 at 12:58:52 PDT (GMT -0700)
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