Carlo Collodi was hardly a household name in the middle of the 20th century, and perhaps even less so today. But his novel, The ‘Adventures of Pinocchio’ most certainly is widely known. To a considerable extent, this lasting fame is the product of Walt Disney’s interest and his use of the story half a century after Collodi’s death to make Disney’s second full-length animated feature.
The story is familiar to many people – a lonely old woodcarver makes a marionette while he dreams of having a son. A fairy brings little Pinocchio to life and promises that he’ll become a real boy if he learns about bravery, loyalty and honesty. Pinocchio embarks on a series of adventures that put these attributes to the test and eventually put his father at risk.
It’s an exciting and sometimes – especially for younger kids – scary adventure, complete with troublesome cigar smoking and pool-playing young delinquents and nasty adults galore. Pinocchio runs into temptation at every turn and makes the same kinds of decisions most real-world kids make – sometimes level-headed ones, but often those that favour experimentation.
Ultimately, though, Pinocchio is a story about the value of family and the desirability of sticking to the straight and narrow. Several of Disney’s most memorable characters were introduced to the world here. Of course there’s Pinocchio himself (voiced by Dickie Jones), Gepetto (Christian Rub) and the Blue Fairy (Evelyn Venable), but there’s also Jiminy Cricket (Cliff Edwards) – Pinocchio’s voice of conscience – who went on to fame and fortune as a staple Disney character.
This film is clearly the product of its era. Its racial portrayal of Roma people (referred to as Gypsies) is the most obvious and painful example of this. Presumably in 1940, Disney and his people didn’t know that the Nazis had already begun exterminating the Roma, one of whom the movie caricatures unsympathetically, as Pinocchio runs off to a circus that is operated by a greedy and cruel ‘Gypsy’ named Stromboli. Even parents who aren’t especially concerned about political correctness would be well advised to explain to their kids in advance what a ‘Gypsy’ is and how they have historically been stereotyped in similar ways to Jewish people.
Except for this unfortunate racial issue, this is a sweet and memorable film that includes some wonderful Disney songs. The memorable song, ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ won an Academy Award, as did the film for best original score. In addition to reaffirming the value of family, Pinocchio also encourages kids to dream – a sentiment that’s as important today as it was in 1940.
