Pinocchio

Pinocchio
Released: February 7, 1940
Basis: Italian Children's Story by Carlo Collodi first printed as serial stories published from 1881 to 1883.
Synopsis: A kindly but lonely woodcarver, Gepetto, crafts a wooden puppet boy, which he names "Pinocchio" (Tuscan for "Pine Nut") and plays with. When he goes to bed, he wishes to a wishing star that his little Pinocchio could be real. While Gepetto is asleep, the Wishing Star descends from the sky and becomes the Blue Fairy, who grants Gepetto's wish and gives Pinocchio sentience, but in order for Pinocchio to become a real boy, he needs to prove himself brave, honest, and selfless. As Pinocchio doesn't have a conscience of his own, the Blue Fairy appoints Jiminy Cricket, a poor and homeless but wise cricket, to be his conscience. Gepetto is overjoyed to discover that his wish came true, but he decides that Pinocchio must go to school to learn how the world works after he naively sets himself on fire. On the way to school, Pinocchio is tricked by a pair of con-artists, a fox named J. Worthington Foulfellow (who calls himself "Honest John") and a cat named Gideon, into working for a greedy puppet master named Stromboli. Stromboli kidnaps Pinocchio, and Jiminy is unable to spring Pinocchio from his cage. The Blue Fairy appears, and Pinocchio lies about his predicament, causing his nose to grow into a tree branch and teaching him a valuable lesson about telling the truth. The Blue Fairy frees Pinocchio, and the two escape from the clutches of Stromboli. However, Pinocchio is intercepted by Foulfellow and Gideon again, and, working on a deal with an evil Coachman, trick Pinocchio into going to Pleasue Island, a theme park island where naughty boys can cause as much chaos as they want. Pinocchio befriends Lampwick, a disobedient youth who teaches Pinocchio the fun of being bad. However, Jiminy discovers that the Island is actually an elaborate plot to turn mischievous boys into donkeys and sell them into work at salt mines. Jiminy rescues Pinocchio before he can be completely transformed (though his ears turn into donkey ears and he grows a donkey's tail), and the two escape the island. They return home only to discover that Gepetto (and his pet cat Figaro and his pet goldfish Cleo) have left days earlier to find Pinocchio and were swallowed by Monstro the whale but were still alive. Determined to make up for all his wrongs, Pinocchio leaves to save his father. Pinocchio is reunited with his family, but they are still trapped inside the whale. Pinocchio starts a massive fire inside Monstro, causing him to sneeze out his prisoners but enraging the beast. Pinocchio saves a drowning Gepetto but at the cost of his life. The Blue Fairy, having seen Pinocchio show bravery, truthfulness, and selflessness, brings him back to life and turns him into a real boy, making Gepetto endlessly happy. Jiminy Cricket is also bestowed with a badge to show that he is an "Official Conscience."
Notes:

• First things first: differences between the source material and the Disney movie. Pinocchio starts life as a magical log who is already sentient and is carved into a living puppet by Gepetto, Jiminy Cricket was based off a one-shot character whom Pinocchio accidentally kills in the beginning of the story, Foulfellow and Gideon are "The Fox and the Cat" in the original and are a bit more developed (they feign injuries which they eventually have in the end, they become horribly poor, and they're more cruel to Pinocchio), The Blue Fairy is actually "The Fairy with Turquoise Hair" and only appears to bail Pinocchio out/teach him valuable lessons, Pinocchio undergoes more trials, Pinocchio is actually turned completely into a donkey, Pinocchio and Gepetto are swallowed by "The Terrible Dogfish" (a dogfish is a smallish type of shark), Lampwick is actually "Candlewick" and Pinocchio discovers him later as a dying donkey on a local farm, and Pinocchio is turned into a real boy because he saves the Fairy's life. All in all, lots of deviations, but the Disney version works in its own right anyway.
• The story starts with another "storybook" opening, but this time it's fully animated and Jiminy serves as a partial narrator.
• All the characters are done in a more cartoony style, like the dwarfs and animals in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. All characters except the Blue Fairy, that is, who somewhat resembles Snow White due to being animated realistically. The realistic animation incorporates all the subtleties in movement, though, which makes her motions appear very fluid and lifelike. It's an interesting contrast to all other characters.
• Actually, Figaro moves fairly realistically, too - for a cat, that is. All the subtleties in how he's animated and such. This is especially in comparison to later cartoon shorts, where he is inexplicably Minnie Mouse's cat and is as catlike as Pluto is doglike: he does act like a cat, to an extent, but he moreover uses his feline physique to maneuver like a human quadruped.
• Jiminy... keeps going for the ladies. It's weird, as one second Jiminy's telling Pinoke that people these days need to be more moral and stuff, and the next he's making passes at clockwork damsels. It's kinda funny, actually, and this, along with some of Jiminy's other antics, make him a bit of a comic relief character.
• Speaking of Jiminy, research tells me that the phrase "Jiminy Cricket(s)" is a euphemism for "Jesus Christ," much the same way "Gosh," "Golly," and "Goodness" are euphemisms for "God."
• Some of the clocks in Gepetto's workshop include scenes of someone chopping off the neck of a turkey, a hunter shooting a songbird, a mother spanking her kid, and a drunken man swaying in and out of a tavern. Uh.
• I really like Gepetto, as he seems to be the kindly old man archetype. We see his hands shake a bit when he reaches down to pick up Pinocchio's schoolbook (a subtle suggestion at his age), he gives cute nicknames to Cleo (his "Water Baby") and Pinocchio (his "little wooden head"), he worries about his little Pinocchio over himself (when he spends several days searching for the lost puppet and gets himself, Figaro, and Cleo eaten by Monstro), and he likes to have fun (he dances around with Pinocchio thrice through the duration of the movie).
• Oh, yeah, when Gepetto thinks there's a prowler in his house (it's actually a newly-born Pinocchio), he pulls out a flintlock pistol, which he accidentally fires at one point. Granted, it seems to fire a firework or a flare more than a bullet, but yeah. Two movies in and we have a gun.
• I really like how Pinocchio's naivete is portrayed in the movie. He doesn't do bad things because he has a bad disposition, but only because he can't really tell that it's bad. Which makes sense, as he has no internal conscience. His bold plan at the end - to start a fire in Monstro, thus making him sneeze them out - is pieced from things that Pinocchio has seen in his life: Pinocchio set his finger on fire in the beginning, Cleo needed to surface for air after Gepetto doused Pinocchio's fire in her fishbowl, characters sneeze throughout the story, Jiminy passes Pinocchio his handkerchief at one point so he can blow his nose. Everything Pinocchio does is based off his experiences in his life.
• When Gepetto has set aside a feast for himself, Pinocchio, Figaro, and Cleo, we see that there's a big chicken or turkey, a fish for Figaro (which is a bit of a disconcerting juxtaposition for Cleo), and... chocolate cake for Cleo?
• That Pinocchio lied used to confound me - what reason would he have for lying? I spoke with my mother, though, and she made me realize that it's much like a little boy, really - youths engage in hyperbole as to their present mortality. I seem to have forgotten this at my ripe old age of 17.
• Foulfellow is wily, but not learned (he can't read or spell, holds Pinocchio's book upside down, is ripped off by Stromboli). But I like him because he's silly and is really obviously a con artist if you pay attention to what he's saying (as he's "diagnosing" Pinocchio, he says Pinocchio has something about "Flying Trapezements," for example).
• Also, Foulfellow is fine with axing someone off and... whatever was the extent of the first part of the Coachman's plan, but Pleasure Island upsets him.
• Pleasure Island seems... somewhat futuristic. It's mostly stuff that could have been done at the time, I suppose (though I lean more towards 1940s than 1880s in terms of the tech of Pleasure Island), but in the opening shot, some of the roller coasters in the background seem semi-futuristic.
• I was also confused about the Coachman's henchmen - what are they? We only ever see them in shadow, and it's hard to tell what they are, though they look like gorillas from their form and spiky fur. My mother helped me with this one, too - she pointed out that a "gorilla" is another term for a henchman, and it can be seen as a subtly literal interpretation of the term. It makes sense to me, and I do have to say that the henchmen are more frightening being only vaguely represented.
• The seahorses underwater look suspiciously like the boys-turned-donkeys on Pleasure Island. Just saying.
• Why is Monstro carnivorous to the extent he is? Yeah, some whales eat fish, but Monstro looks like a humpback whale to me, which is a type of baleen whale (baleen is a type of filter that replaces the teeth in the mouth - it's designed to minimize the amount of water filtered into the body while eating krill). It would have no interest in eating fish, let alone humans. Still, he is a very daunting creature, and does make for a terrifying foe.
• A little off-topic: why is Monstro depicted as having very colorful innards in the Kingdom Hearts games? He isn't depicted to have anything but red coloring in his innards in the movie. I suppose it'd be somewhat bland to trek through drab red cavernous insides, but The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time manages to make the inside of the whale-like Jabu Jabu look both semi-realistic and interesting enough.
• Some lines that stuck out for me:
• Gepetto: (after all the clocks in his workshop go off) "Wonder what time it is..."
• Jiminy: (at Gepetto's wish) "A very lovely thought... but not at all practical."
• J. Worthington Foulfellow: (to Gideon) "...or my name is Honest John!" (goes on to tell Pinocchio that his name is Honest John)
• In "An Actor's Life For Me," Foulfellow seems to just be making up stuff after a certain point - he rhymes "beaver coat" with something about a cart for a goat.
• Jiminy: (after discovering Pinocchio's popularity as an actor) "What does an actor want with a conscience, anyway?"
• Pinocchio: (trying to explain Stromboli's plot to Jiminy) "Just because I'm a gold brick, he's gonna chop me into firewood!"
• Coachman: (to himself) "Give a bad boy enough rope and he'll soon make a jackass of himself"
• Jiminy: (to Pinocchio and Lampwick) "Go on! Make a jackass of yourself!"
• Lampwick: (to Pinoccio) "What do I look like? A jackass?" (turns into a jackass)

All in all, I found that I liked Pinocchio a lot more than I remember. In terms of how it compares to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White was a lot more experimental, which in some cases worked better (the focus on realistic lighting was subtle but made it look visually stunning) and in other cases worse (the pacing in Snow White was a bit sped up towards the start and end, with a focus on the playing around towards the middle. Pinocchio has a more consistent pacing that works better). Pinocchio also has better characterization, though this is only because the main character was a lot more developed, and each character is more than a single level as opposed to Snow White only giving Grumpy depth and having the various characters try to melt Grumpy's unhappy disposition. There is still a lot more improvement to go in terms of storytelling - characters still need to be fleshed out and given full individual stories, for instance - but Pinocchio isn't a bad movie in the least.