Pinocchio! I love this movie! I’ve always loved this movie so I may be viewing through a biased, nostalgia lens. But is that so bad? Is it so bad to have nostalgia? I like and remember that thing, and that makes me happy and sad at the same time. Isn’t that what nostalgia is? Must it be a sign of weakness??
Anyway, this movie starts with the song “When You Wish Upon A Star,” and I think it’s the greatest Disney song of all time. It’s just so beautiful and it perfectly encapsulates that “Disney magic feel.” I know it’s so fuckin cheesy to say that but it’s what Disney’s good at, that “magic feel” about wishing and dreaming and happily ever after. The melody is so rich and Cliff Edwards sings it beautifully.
Then we get into Geppetto’s workshop and it’s all these clocks, and decorations, and furniture and scraps of wood, it’s so rich. This is what I’d say to this scene: “Ya look gorgeous, baby!”
Jiminy Cricket serves almost as a fourth-wall breaker. He says some comments about what’s going on. And it could be him just talking to himself, but it’s like he’s talking to us too. He’s like “Not at all practical,” and “What does an actor want with a conscience anyhow?” kind of to himself, but kinda breaking the fourth wall. It’s kinda fun.
And the opening to the town scene: beautiful. The camera moves forward, moves down, goes down a street. It really feels like a real world and the camera is traveling through it, as opposed to just: here’s a background, here’s a character. Pinocchio makes it feel like a world we could be in. It’s got DEPTH. The depth of this movie is incredible. This world felt like it was “lived in,” like it was a world that had all different characters living in it that weren’t in the movie.
The villains are sinister. Honest John’s a dastardly fellow. Just out doing some scams, some schemes to make a quick buck. He tricks Pinocchio into becoming an actor for some quick cash from Stromboli. It’s just a scam. This gives Honest John a sense of plausible deniability. “I didn’t do the horrible things to Pinocchio, Stromboli did. I didn’t know what was gonna happen, I just facilitated the whole deal and profited off it. It’s Stromboli you’re after!”
And Stromboli! He sees Pinocchio, an obviously sentient and intelligent being, and enslaves him. He ignores his pleas for help, he locks him up, and forces him to perform so that Stromboli to get rich. And, Stromboli says, once Pinocchio has served his purpose, Stromboli will kill him, turning him into firewood. And is that not the true evil of Man? To look at your fellow Man, and to consider his emotions inconsequential, his passions unimportant, his free will nonexistent, and his body disposable. Is that not Evil?
Anyway, the Coachman, somehow, goes further. He’s just as ruthlessly obsessed with money as Stromboli, but his approach is even worse. He doesn’t just want to enslave a puppet boy for his own enrichment, he wants to enslave/transform a multitude of boys, mutilating them into donkeys. In essence, he destroys them.
The movie is also about Temptation.
And Pleasure Island. This is kind of a theme of morality back then. There’s a great fear of degeneracy, impurity. People need to resist the temptation of the bright lights, cigars, drinking, excess, vandalism, and.. BILLIARDS. Anything like that has to be shunned. People devolve when they engage in these behaviors. This is clearly shown in the movie, as the boys who couldn’t resist the PLEASURE Island devolve into donkeys. They’re punished for pursuing pleasure.
I’m not sure I agree with that point, at least not to this extreme. Sure, some excesses and pleasure are unhealthy, but some are still just kinda fun! And fun has value! It’s fun to drink a few beers and play pool! That isn’t any serious evil crime! Fun is good sometimes.
But, in their scenario, engaging in pleasure sends you into a damnation of being a donkey. I just feel like, we can feel pleasure, it feels good, and we should enjoy it while we can, as long as you’re not too dangerous and you don’t harm anyone else. You don’t deserve some real-world equivalent of a donkey curse, do you?
And while I may not completely agree with the moral message, it’s very interesting. And the overall theme is more about resisting temptation in general, and I like thinking about that concept. Temptation seems like it’s just “wanting to do something,” but it’s more of “wanting to do something with the belief that the thing is actually ‘bad.’”
Anyway, then there’s MONSTRO THE WHALE. He has no morals, no moral lesson or metaphor. He’s just a force of nature, a monster. What a perfect name, Monstro. We love a good old-fashioned Monster movie. The Monster, whether it’s King Kong, Godzilla, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Cloverfield Monster, the Alien, or the shark from Jaws, no matter what they’re called, the people in the movie know them just as “The Monster.” And we like that. Or some of us do, anyway.
This movie is dark. There’s a lot of scary scenes, including Lampwick panicking as he’s transforming into a donkey. As his body is mutated into that of a donkey, it sets in with Lampwick’s mind. He realizes what’s happening and he can’t stop it, and true Terror sets in. It’s really a horrifying scene, a boy fading away, he wants to stop it but he can’t control it, and he is consumed by fear. It’s like, that scene just exudes so much panic.
And just contrast it with Snow White. Snow White had a couple scary scenes, sure, but overall the movie is happy. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and the heroes live happily ever after. But Pinocchio is not like that. Sure, it’s a happy ending for Pinocchio and Geppetto, but what about the dozens of other boys? What about the Coachman? That evil was not defeated at all! They didn’t end that evil. He’s still tricking, mutating, and enslaving young boys! His human trafficking ring is still going on without a hitch. Pretty dark. But I guess that’s kinda the thing about the really early Disney movies. They’re dark.
It’s like, a guy really sat down and drew this:
and thought, “Yeah, this would be good for kids to see.”
But, like, yeah, the Coachman is not defeated. The Evil Queen falls off the cliff, Ursula gets destroyed by a ship, Scar gets eaten by hyenas, Jafar gets locked up. But the Coachman’s still out there enslaving kids by stripping them of their humanity, transforming them, physically, into animals. To look at man as just an animal, to treat them as a disposable animal to be used or destroyed. That is true Evil.
But yeah the animations are beautifully rich throughout, and the water scenes are just spectacular. Great movie. One of the best Disney movies.
Lefty Forrester 