Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
The old woodcarver Geppetto finishes a puppet boy and wishes on a star that he were real. That night the Blue Fairy brings Pinocchio to life, promising he will become a real boy if he proves himself brave, truthful and unselfish, and appoints Jiminy Cricket as his conscience. On his first day of school Pinocchio is lured away by the fox Honest John and the cat Gideon and sold to the puppet showman Stromboli, who locks him in a birdcage. When he lies to the Blue Fairy about it, his nose grows; she frees him once, and he is quickly tempted again, this time to Pleasure Island, where boys smoke, fight and wreck things until they turn into donkeys to be sold. Pinocchio escapes with donkey ears and a tail, and finds that Geppetto, searching for him, has been swallowed by the whale Monstro. He dives to the sea floor, is swallowed too, and gets the whale to sneeze them out by lighting a fire. Pinocchio dies saving his father in the surf; the Blue Fairy, judging him brave and unselfish, brings him back as a real boy.
Why It Matters
- Watch Pleasure Island and Monstro. The boys' transformation into donkeys, with Lampwick braying in panic at his own reflection, is one of the most frightening scenes Disney ever made, and the whale chase, with huge masses of animated water, shows the studio's effects animators at their peak.
- It was Disney's second feature, and its craft went well beyond Snow White: multiplane camera moves through the village, intricate clockwork in Geppetto's workshop and fully realised effects animation. It won the Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star", which became the Disney anthem, and it was added to the National Film Registry in 1994.
Notes and Trivia
- Released early in the Second World War, which cut off much of the European market, it lost money on its first release; reissues later made it profitable.
- See also: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Fantasia (1940).