Pinocchio (1940)

USA, 88 minutes

Directors: Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Ben Sharpsteen

Writers: Carlo Collodi, Ted Sears, Otto Englander, Webb Smith, William Cottrell, Joseph Sabo, Erdman Penner, Aurelius Battaglia, Bill Peet, Frank Tashlin

Music: Leigh Harline, Paul J. Smith, Frank Churchill, Edward H. Plumb

Animators / editors: numerous

Cast: Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Cliff Edwards, Evelyn Venable, Walter Catlett, Frankie Darro, Charles Judels, Mel Blanc, Walt Disney

In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of Pinocchios have been showing up around here lately. There’s a Disney remake starring Tom Hanks as Geppetto and a long-in-the-making version by Guillermo del Toro, both of which came out just last year. Haven’t seen them yet. This 1940 fully animated Disney version is the first of a long line of movie and TV adaptations. It has felt like the original to me most of my life, but the wooden puppet—pine, if you please, source of his name—and wannabe boy actually goes back to a series of stories by the Italian author Carlo Collodi published in the 1880s. Among other things, Collodi’s Pinocchio is something of a reprobate and in fact ends up hanged from a tree by the Fox and the Cat. The scene as reported by Wikipedia is desolate: “[A wind] beat the poor puppet from side to side, making him swing violently, like the clatter of a bell ringing for a wedding.... His breath failed him and he could say no more. He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, stretched his legs, gave a long shudder, and hung stiff and insensible.”

There’s nothing quite so bleak or explicit in this 1940 picture, where the Fox is known as J. Worthington Foulfellow, or Honest John, and the Cat is called Gideon and set up to be a version of Harpo Marx. The best cat in Pinocchio belongs to the craftsman Geppetto, who builds Pinocchio. Its name is Figaro and it is a feisty, charming tuxedo cat who almost steals the show for as long as we are in the Geppetto household. But I digress. Of course, no one is going to be hanged to finish a Disney cartoon (I think?) but, in 1940, when there was much less inclination to acknowledge sensitivities, you could still have Pleasure Island and the fate of the lost boys who are kidnapped there. It’s enough to give one pause for thinking about it too much, not least because it invokes the specter of missing children.

But, again, I digress. Pinocchio is actually full of sage advice for any boy confronted by temptation. The Blue Fairy, with a lilting tender soprano voice, is usually the one dropping these pearls of wisdom. ”Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy,” she says, touching on the curious recurring theme, in science fiction and ancient sources alike, that robots and other simulacrum mechanical beings long to be human. “Always let your conscience be your guide,” she says, designating a dapper insect for the specific honors, Jiminy Cricket, who acts like Fred Astaire. Or, sounding a surprisingly sardonic note at one point, the Blue Fairy says, “A boy who won’t be good might just as well be made of wood.”

I have to admit I was distracted this time through the cartoon classic—more than 10 years since I’d seen it last and that was at an oil and lube shop in a tiny lobby while I waited—by how much of it was lifted in the light of day for A.I. Artificial Intelligence, down to the Pleasure Island milieu, the Blue Fairy, and a poignant search in the ocean at the end. At the same time, I have to say, somehow it only makes me appreciate the Spielberg/Kubrick collaboration more, which can deepen and dwell on the themes and nuances that this picture necessarily has little time for.

Not that Pinocchio is rushed or hurried. It’s just a short picture with a lot of plot points to get to, making up for its bluntness with solid pacing that waits for no one. In 1940 a feature-length cartoon was still a novelty—what is this, the second one after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? It could contain adult themes, and Pinocchio does, though it soft-pedals them all because explicitly it was more intended for children and their perceived attention spans as well as to be “appropriate” for their delicate minds. Pinocchio was released in February of 1940. In November of that same year, Disney would attempt to broaden the scope of animated features with Fantasia, aimed at adults.

In terms of economy, for example, consider that the point likely most popularly associated with Pinocchio now is that his nose grows whenever he lies. That actually takes up only one brief scene in this picture, where the nose is artfully shown growing like a tree branch, with twigs and leaves and birds nesting. It’s kind of repulsive, in a way—too natural. This is the point where the Blue Fairy mocks him for not being good and made of wood. The larger point of Pinocchio is the desire to be human, a strange desire perhaps but one that is seen everywhere in adult fare from the New Testament of the Bible to Star Trek: The Next Generation to various ongoing AI dystopias (now on sale from kindle).

I’m still inclined to discount Pinocchio a little as juvenilia, but nonetheless it comes with lots of unmistakable strong points. The animation is superb as always. The way they bring the cat Figaro to life on purely visual terms is impressive alone. The character of the soft-headed Pinocchio is often a torment—fool, can’t you see what this “Honest John” is?—but that’s the way things work in the movies. Pinocchio eats its cake and has it too, as first [spoilers] Pinocchio is summarily killed at the end by the Monstro whale, sacrificing himself to save Gepetto, Figaro, and Cleo the goldfish, who absurdly travels in a bowl even underwater in the ocean. And then the Blue Fairy shows up with figurative ruby slippers for everyone. Pinocchio is restored to life as a real boy and Jiminy Cricket gets a badge authorizing him as a conscience. It’s made of pure gold, must be worth thousands of dollars. For the animation alone and some of the themes it entertains, Pinocchio is one you gotta see, although chances are good your parents took care of that for you when you were a kid. Still worth a revisit anytime.