Author Topic: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio  (Read 13859 times)

Melvil

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #40 on: March 16, 2009, 11:33:51 PM »
I think his decision to save Geppeto may be a selfish act, but within it hides a certain morality. If my father is in grave danger, my reflex is do whatever I can within my power to save him. It is a selfish act but it is the morally correct one. By the film's end, the fairy rewards Pinocchio by turning him into a real boy. He has committed a great act of good. He put his own life on the line in order to save someone eles. Pinocchio may not have been thinking about what is right and what is wrong at the time of making that decision, but ultimately he makes the right one. I think that by being rewarded by the fairy, he understands the meaning of the decision he made and therefore the meaning of sacrifice and making morally just decisions.

I'm just not sure that he did enough to prove himself and earn his reward. He made one morally right decision because it happened to coincide with his own desires (to save his father), but never did he seem to learn from his mistakes, discriminate right from wrong, or listen to his conscience.

edgar00

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #41 on: March 17, 2009, 12:42:08 AM »
I think the viewer is led to assume that by then end of the film, Pinocchio has in fact learned from his mistakes. He was told to go to school but didn't and ended up in trouble multiple times. When he took it upon himself to save Geppeto's life, he was rewarded by turning into a real human boy. The movie is already over 80 minutes long with just those two elements. The book has far more material to it that I believe balances things out a bit more.

The movie may not make the greatest attempt at showing the audience if Pinocchio has learned his lesson or 'earned his stripes/flesh' if you will, but personally I think it does just enough.
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oldkid

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #42 on: March 19, 2009, 03:03:15 PM »
Like I said before about Snow White, that was a film about innocence. Her innocence was the connecting point of the whole movie, it drove the actions of everyone around her and changed the actions of people around her. Pinocchio lacked that great connector, there's wasn't any driving force for any character that was sustained for the entire film.

While I can see that Snow White might be about innocence, I think that Pinocchio actually has a clearer focus-- the fact that Pinocchio already is the boy he is striving to be.  In every scene he acts like a boy-- unable to concentrate, loving his father but a lack of faithfulness, but a willingness to be heroic if the situation demands it.  All that the Blue Fairy did at the end was to give him flesh like a boy-- but he already was that boy.  The story keeps pushing Pinocchio to be a GOOD boy, but he is a boy through and through from the time that he was given life.  But it isn't only about his boyishness, but about the humanity we all share.  We are all, at times, faithless like Pinocchio and loyal like Pinocchio.  We are all seekers of pleasure, but willing to set pleasure aside for those we love.  We all get distracted and tell lies and they usually have consequences.  I think this story holds together better than Snow White-- certainly I can appreciate the struggles he went through better.  Snow White was more of a fantasy-- having little or no connect with the real world.  Snow White is too innocent, the Queen too wicked.  While Pinocchio is that mix of good and bad and careless and innocent and heroic that make up any true human. 

Anyway, I obviously like Pinocchio better.
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oldkid

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #43 on: March 19, 2009, 03:37:39 PM »
One comment on Edgar's excellent review-- thank you so much for the effort put into it!

I have never thought myself to be a fan of moralistic children's literature or movies.  But I think that the real problem is that most of the effort goes into pointing out the moral but not in being entertaining.  But here we have a very moralistic film-- be a good boy, do what your father tells you, don't get distracted-- that never forgets it's main purpose-- to keep kids in the seats.  Visually, it has many stunning moments; Jiminy is really there less as Pinocchio's conscience than an entertainer (and an excellent one at that, which is why it is Jiminy who is chosen to narrate and comment on so many of Disney's non-fiction shorts); we all want to see how Pinocchio gets out of the terrible circumstances he finds himself in-- and each conclusion is unique. 

Honestly, I've seen Snow White a few times and I've wanted to doze through it, just waiting for the dwarves to come on screen.  But Pinocchio is facinating throughout.  A moral tale, but morality is okay as long as entertainment is what it's really about.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Melvil

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #44 on: March 20, 2009, 07:01:28 PM »
Hey Steve, welcome to the boards, and thanks for joining in the discussion! You make some good points, and I think your explanation of Pinnochio's focus is dead on. So far I've only talked in relation to whether or not he lived up to being a "good boy" and earned his reward of being made real, but I would absolutely agree that he was a real boy from the start, and it was just perception based on a technicality that he wasn't.

saltine

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #45 on: April 06, 2009, 10:30:22 PM »
GQ film critic Tom Carson writes that Pinocchio is one wacked out nasty movie and suggests it as a double feature with Salo (and he was bored by Salo).
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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #46 on: April 06, 2009, 10:45:16 PM »
Did Carson have a quota to reach this week?  Set column inches to fill?  I've seen commentaries that reach to make connections, but he is really overplaying it.  He's entitled to his take on things, but this one seems to be at the extreme edges of the margins.  I do like his take on why Honest John and Gideon are animals in human form, but the stuff about the fairy being blue because blue = dirty back then is an unbelievable leap of interpretation.  (I wonder if he pulled a hamstring making that stretch.)

edgar00

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #47 on: April 06, 2009, 10:45:58 PM »
Interesting, although I don't by much of it. He has some very peculiar views on the film. Thought provoking? Maybe, to a certain degree. A lot of what he says sounds like stuff someone would come up with if they really wanted to be nit picky and rip the film apart, because any movie can. I can rip Goldfinger apart with funky references and analyses. If that's really what he feels, then okay. A bit odd, but there's nothing we can do about it.

Incidentally enough, I did point out in my review that odd nature of the anthropomophic fox and cat that pick up Pinnochio as he walks to school. It didn't necessarily ruin the scene for me, but it struck me as a bit odd, I won't hide it.
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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #48 on: April 09, 2009, 12:53:09 AM »
I just learned that Figaro the cat was spun off into a series of short films including...
Figaro and Cleo (1943)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CseRpSwRcf4#

First Aiders (1944) where he faces off against Pluto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZHg4mgW_A0#

Cat Nap Pluto (1948)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKGhYSqdK0o#

Corndog

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Re: Disney Animation Marathon: Pinocchio
« Reply #49 on: October 04, 2009, 11:18:38 PM »
Pinocchio (Hamilton Luske & Ben Sharpteen, 1940) -

Pinocchio is a wonder of a film. The opening song, "Wish Upon a Star," is unforgettable, as is the opening sequence featuring Jiminy Cricket, my favorite character in the film (I mean he does deliver the line: "What does an actor want with a conscience anyway?") He opens as the narrator and sets the scene at Geppetto's shop, which is the greatest scene in the film and one of my favorite maybe of all time. The entire sequences of him putting his newly finished Pinocchio, Cleo, and Figaro (who is also awesome) to bed, wishing upon the star and when the Blue Fairy comes down and makes Pin'oke a real boy. Every bit of it is true magic. Perfect and wonderful. It is so beautiful and happy and the animation is great.

But then evil appears and that is where I started to like it less. I disliked all the bad guys, and not in the sense that they were bad guys but the way they were done. Stromboli was just awful and the creepy Pleasure Island guy. How was I not scarred by this and him turning them into jackasses? The message was very in your face in this during this part of the story. I get it, but didn't like how it was done. If you do bad things and are a bad person, you are a jackass. And then the whole whale thing was just off to me, I didn't hate it, but it didn't do a whole lot for me. There were small, specific things during this part that were good and made me smile ("Hey, get a load of that stained glass window."), but overall it didn't work.

The magic is all there to be sure, but it starts to lack too soon and for too long. I didn't like it as much as I remembered it, but I still appreciated it a great deal. A whole extra half star goes for the opening.

Rating: 3.5/4
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