Pinocchio (1940)

Pinocchio

Year: 1940

Supervising Directors: Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske

Starring: Cliff Edwards, Dickie Jones, Evelyn Venable, Mel Blanc, et al.

Next up, Walt Disney's second animated feature, Pinocchio. This is another one that I saw as a small child but not since, and, again, I think I liked it better this time. Apparently it's loosely based on the 1883 book The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, and is the story of a marionette who is brought to life by his father's love, and must prove himself to be "brave, truthful, and unselfish" in the face of various temptations in order to become a real boy.

I have read that Pinocchio is Walt Disney's technical masterpiece, and this may well be the case. The animation is seriously impressive; the movie is worth watching for that alone. It's just that large portions of the plot don't make any sense.

But first things first. This movie looks superb. It uses the same multiplane camera that was developed for Snow White, but the layering really shines here because there's so much more going on. The technique is really evident in all the sweeping shots of the little city, in the zooms through windows, and in the brief scene of motion in perspective out the carriage window after Pinocchio is kidnapped.

Other impressive bits of animation include the many clocks in Gepetto's shop; and the scenes under the ocean, which have a neat watery distortion effect that changes in response to the characters' movement.

I wasn't nearly so impressed with the actual plot of the movie, though. (I am not familiar with the source, although its Wikipedia page makes it sound even weirder than the adaptation.) Part of this might just be the effects of age: for one thing, my twenty-first-century cynicism finds the whole idea of a grown man wishing on a star difficult to take seriously. And since the whole thing is about acquiring good morals, many scenes have suffered from changes in our idea of "vice". For instance, I found it pretty funny that Pinocchio's first step astray is wanting to be (gasp!) an actor! , and that when Jiminy Cricket finds him on Pleasure Island, he chastises him for "drinking! Smoking! Playin' pool!"

Other elements just don't make logical sense, or raise more questions than they answer. Like, wouldn't it be vastly cheaper to just breed jackasses than to maintain a free amusement park for delinquents? And why does Pinocchio's family think that he has drowned, when he just spent about seven minutes at the bottom of the ocean with no ill effects? (For that matter, how do you even tell if a puppet is dead?)

I did like some of the characters-- for one, the Blue Fairy. She's a more womanly character than Snow White was, in animation style and behavior--she's mature, beautiful, even a little flirtatious. She's also the most realistically-animated character in Pinocchio, and the way she's drawn shows a dramatic improvement from the human characters in Snow White.

Jiminy Cricket is also pretty interesting. I have this vague impression of him as Disney's iconic paragon of virtue, and I had forgotten that in his debut movie he is a fallible character. Leaving aside his weakness for wind-up women, he actually walks out on Pinocchio twice before he stays true. I hadn't noticed as a kid that Pinocchio's conscience also learned something.

(Trivia: Jiminy Cricket's name is a pun--the phrase is a mild oath, probably a corruption of "Jesus Christ". The character has largely supplanted the oath, which makes it a little bizarre when the seven dwarfs exclaim it in Snow White. You're two years early, guys!)

Another thing that I did really like about this movie was its extensive use of double-takes for humor, which is taken to a whole new level when Pinocchio comes back from his apparent death, and Gepetto argues with him about whether he is alive. It's very funny, and it hasn't gotten old.

Overall, I'm glad to have watched Pinocchio again. It's entertaining and a pleasure to look at, and it's certainly worth seeing once. But I don't plan to watch it again anytime soon.

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Things that probably wouldn't make it into a G-rated Disney animated movie in 2009, for whatever reason:

• Smoking, even though it's mostly done by the villains, and is depicted as unpleasant when the hero takes it up. Especially the scenes with children smoking.
• The same for drinking.
• Offensive national stereotyping. The "around the world" puppet show with the various foreign women throwing themselves at Pinocchio, for one thing, but mostly the fat, swarthy villainous Italian puppet-master Stromboli. I don't speak much Italian, but I am pretty sure that the "Italian" he keeps lapsing into is gibberish...

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Next up, Fantasia!

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Year: 1937

Supervising Director: David Hand

Starring: Adriana Caselotti, Lucille LaVerne, Harry Stockwell, Pinto Colvig, et al. Interestingly, the movie doesn't credit any of its actors.

All right, first up is Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature: 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I had seen this one before, but probably not since I was about five or seven--I remember thinking Dopey was funny--and frankly, I was afraid it would be lame. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is not the case. There are a couple of weak points, and the movie does show its age a little, but overall Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is highly enjoyable.

The first thing we notice about the title character is how--well--cartoony she is. She and the other humans are supposed to be portrayed in a more "realistic" style than the comical dwarfs, and so they are, but you can definitely see elements of their roots in wavy 1930s cartoon shorts. Look at Snow White's big shoes in her first scene, for example, and her big doll eyes throughout. Her movements are also an indicator--she's always making expansive gestures with her hands and arms, which seems reminiscent of early cartoons, and (although '37 is pretty late for this) may have a little to do with early film acting techniques. Moreover . . . listen to her voice:

She definitely sounds like something out of a Silly Symphony. In fact, her high squeaky voice is enough to put some people off the movie--apparently the reason this movie wasn't a childhood favorite for me is because my mother finds Snow White completely annoying. But I found that I got used to it quickly. Also, according to the character design, Snow White was only supposed to be fourteen years old*. She becomes more sympathetic if you remember that she's quite young, and she's trying to be ridiculously cute. Somehow, that makes her cute again.

Besides, the other seven title characters are indisputably great. A couple of Snow White's solo scenes are perhaps a little cheesy--especially "With A Smile And A Song" and the little rhyming speech that precedes it--but nearly every scene with the dwarfs in it elicits a smile. The film isn't really long enough to develop each dwarf in detail; only Doc, Grumpy, and the Harpo-Marx-esque Dopey really stand out. The seven together, though, provide some entertaining dialogue and a lot of gentle physical comedy.

The most entertaining part of the film is the middle section, when Snow White is living with the dwarfs. She assumes their tiny house belongs to seven children, and naively decides to play at being their mother--an attitude that doesn't change when she realizes the truth. She settles into the domestic role with ease, and it plays out a little like a romantic comedy as the seven old bachelors adjust to the new feminine influence in their lives.

These scenes especially focus on the relationship between Snow White and Grumpy, who is the most interesting character in the movie. As the name would suggest, he is the only dwarf who isn't enthusiastic about Snow White's staying with them. So as her charm starts to work, he becomes the only dynamic character, and it's completely charming to watch him go from doubting the female's "wicked wiles," to leading the charge to rescue her from the evil Queen.

(By the way, the Queen is a pretty frightening villain. In the scene pictured above, she walks past the skeleton of someone who has apparently died of thirst in her dungeon, and taunts it. Wow.)

The only part of Snow White that I found really disappointing was the ending. After Snow White apparently dies, the movie abruptly returns to the framing device of a book to narrate the passage of several months. Then the Prince shows up, kisses Snow White, awakens her, carries her to his horse, and takes her away, all in less than three minutes, and with almost no dialogue.

The problem here is really with the source material--fairy tales don't tend to drag out their happily-ever-after endings. But Disney did a great job fleshing out other elements of the story: giving each dwarf a distinct schtick instead of making them homogenous, for instance, and allowing Snow White and the Prince to fall mutually in love while she was still conscious. I wish their reunion had also been made a little more interesting. As it is, it's happy, sure, and certainly tightly crafted, but not entirely satisfying.

Overall, though, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is still really entertaining, seventy-two years after it was released. (Whoa!) I definitely plan to watch it again in the foreseeable future.

*Finch, Christopher. Art of Walt Disney.

Introduction

I think most people my age would say they grew up with Disney animation--come to think of it, I suppose most people currently alive in the United States would say so. It occurs to me, though, that I'm not really familiar with all of the animated Disney movies. There are several that I've never seen at all, and quite a few more that I haven't seen since I was too young to have an informed opinion.

Well, that's about to change. I've decided to watch every Walt Disney Animation Studios feature film, in the order they were released. Why? Well, for one thing, I tend to like Disney movies, so I think it will be fun. And if I'm going to watch them, it will be interesting to start at the beginning and see what sort of themes come up repeatedly, and if there are any general trends in the films over time.

I'll document my impressions of each film on this blog, to give the endeavor some sense of structure. And because, hey, maybe you haven't seen Make Mine Music in a while either, and want to know if you should take another look.

I've put in a hold request at the library for 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I look forward to this!

---Edit, 7/10/09: Well, my library only had Snow White on VHS, and my family's VCR promptly destroyed it. (Come to think of it, I think the VCR is older than I am.) So I've put in an interlibrary loan request for the DVD, and should be able to get it in a couple weeks... According to Wikipedia, Disney's coming out with new Blu-Ray and DVD editions of this movie in October. I guess it's about time.