10 Fascinating Facts About Disney's Pinocchio
Think this film is dark? Try reading the book.
When reading Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures Of Pinocchio, you wouldn’t have thought a book with cricket murder, foxes hanging puppets by the neck, fairies in purgatory or donkeys getting skinned for drums would make a suitable children’s film. But Walt Disney is the master of adaptations, and managed to create one of the best and most endearing features in his library.
Images and lessons from Pinocchio remain in the consciousness of millions who have seen it: don’t lie or your nose will grow, goodness is rewarded, don’t be an ass, etc. Its music is timeless, its technical achievements are far beyond what any animated studio had attempted in the years before or even since, and even today is considered one of the best animated film of all time.
With World War 2 on the horizon for America, Disney had a hard time bringing Pinocchio to the masses. It would take many years for the company to reach out to Europe with the Nazi regime growing and battles raging throughout the continent. But for America, Pinocchio was the film families needed for a temporary escape from the coming storm that would soon hit their shores.
Following the success of Snow White, Walt Disney was eager to see Pinocchio follow the same path. But with the unrest in the world, would it do so? Here’s things you might not have known about Disney’s second animated classic.
10. The Main Character Went Through Major Changes
Like Snow White, the early production was beset with several rewrites and redesigns. It came to a point where Walt had to halt production for a few months to rework everything from the ground up. The majority of this came from the puppet himself, Pinocchio.
It’s no surprise by now that Disney alters their source material to make it more accessible to younger audiences and Carlo Collodi’s original novel needed a lot of trimming and tweaking to change the very weird and incredibly dark story into one about being “brave, truthful and unselfish”. This all began with the design of the character.
Original sketches by Ollie Pohnston and Frank Thomas saw Pinocchio look closer to a marionette, i.e. wooden all round with a nutcracker-style mouth, peaked cap and flat hands. Disney hated it and ordered an immediate redesign, with Fred Moore adding more human elements. It wasn’t until much later that the animators had to take the opposite route and take a sketch of a cute boy and give him wooden limbs and the famous nose. This was the design approved by Disney to be inserted into the final film.
Story-wise, the character needed rejigging too (and not just from the source material where he was selfish, cruel and would only learn lessons through torture). Disney noticed that Pinocchio was far too gullible and was too easily led into situations that would turn out for the worse. It was at this point he decided the little puppet boy needed a companion to show him right from wrong, and this was where Jiminy Cricket came in.