The Disney Animated Canon: From Small beginnings to the House of Mouse: Pinnochio

   Disney. No one name holds as much power over business and the world of Animation as much as Walter Elias Disney. Whether it was making the first animated motion picture in the English world, further revolutionizing the field of animation, or making one of the most powerful media companies in the world, Disney managed to become a titan of industry and media. Nowadays, we joke about the House of Mouse and its’ lasting impact in today’s world…but without Disney, much of the animated world today…well…wouldn’t be.

Pinnochio: When Disney-fication isn’t that bad.

  Pinnochio was released on February 7th, 1940. It was the second film in the Disney Animated canon and the first example of “Disney-fication”. It’s veeery loosely based on the book of the same name by Carlo Collodi…and honestly, that’s actually a pretty good thing. Hoo boy, that story is a doozy!

Summary: A woodworker named Geppetto dreams of having a son and creates a puppet that he names “Pinnocchio”. Before bed, he wishes that the puppet would come to life. While he is asleep, a Fairy brings the puppet to life. She then promises that if he is brave, truthful and unselfish…she’ll turn him the rest of the way into a real boy. She then assigns Jiminy Cricket to be his conscience. When Geppetto wakes up, he gets pretty excited that he now has a son.

Poor Pinnocchio, however, doesn’t have much of a concept of right and wrong, and on his first day of school, he gets waylaid by a Cat and Fox and talked into going into show business for Stromboli. It seems well and good…until Pinnocchio figures out his new benefactor is…more than a bit unstable and he runs home. This is sped up when the blue fairy finds him and we get the familiar picture of pinnocchio’s nose growing when he lies to her and he realizes he made a pretty poor choice. Geppetto…like any good parent…is worried sick about Pinnocchio and searches high and low for him.

Pinnocchio does his best to return home…and is waylaid again by the cat and the fox…who this time ship him off to pleasure island (and the biggest source of nightmare fuel in the movie…*shudders*). There, Jiminy gets fed up when Pinnocchio refuses to listen to him and go back home…until he finds out what happens to the kids who stay in Pleasure Island. Pinnocchio begins to realize this as well when he sees a fellow kid turn into a full donkey from roughhousing, drinking, smoking and…playing billiards (it had a different stigma in the 40s). Turns out, if you act like an Ass here…you get turned into one for real and shipped off to who knows where! And the coach driver was in on it the whole time.

Pinnocchio runs away, mid transformation…and finally makes it home. Problem is…Geppetto is gone, having been eaten by a whale while looking for Pinnocchio. Probably the biggest, scariest whale put into animated film: Monstro. Pinnocchio is eaten, finds Geppetto, gets the both of them out…and is turned into a real boy at the end.

Background: Pinnocchio didn’t quite do as well as Snow White when it came to being released. After all…it was still WWII. It left Walt pretty depressed and lost RKO pictures a ton of money. That said, it gave us “When You wish upon a Star” which is now pretty much the official song of the Disney Corporation and their Theme Parks. On top of that, this movie is one of two animated movies in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies list, with the other one being its’ predecessor. On top of that, this is the only Disney movie, as of now, to have a 100% on Rotton Tomatoes. Not too shabby for number 2!
By the way…notice how I use the term “Disney-fication” here…Get used to it appearing in many of Disney’s movies (Especially the Jungle Book). The original source material for Pinnocchio was pretty gruesome. Jiminy barely lasted his introductory chapter! Pinnocchio squashed him himself! And that’s without going on about Geppetto being more temperamental, Pinnocchio being a pretty scary brat…and the cat and fox being hung in the end! *shudders*. The movie more than makes up for the nightmare fuel with Pleasure Island, which is one of the scariest bits in Disney Animation…and we never find out what happens to those poor kids.