Q: I was watching Pinocchio the other day
and my family and I can't figure out what country the movie takes place in.
Could you help us out?
Catie, Lakeville, Massachusetts
Catie, Lakeville, Massachusetts
A [Dave Smith]: Pinocchio is an Italian story, written by Carlo Collodi. So the locale is likely Italy.
[Wikipedia]
Pinocchio is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the 1883 children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi, and has since appeared in many adaptations of that story and others. Carved by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a small Italian village, he was created as a wooden puppet, but dreamed of becoming a real boy. Pinocchio is often a term used to describe an individual who is prone to telling lies, fabricating stories and exaggerating or creating tall tales for various reasons.
[IMDb]
Amongst the nipping and tucking, there were two longer scenes taken out.
One included an extended scene of Pleasure Island. The other is of
Geppetto telling Pinocchio of his grandfather, a pine tree.
Mel Blanc, best known
for performing the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and many other
cartoon characters--particularly from the Warner Bros. stable--was cast
as Gideon, which became his only Disney role. Walt Disney,
however, eventually decided that the character should be mute, and all
of the dialogue that Blanc recorded was cut, save for a solitary hiccup
that can be heard inside the Red Lobster Tavern.
When Pinocchio is changed into a real boy, his hands are transformed
from three-fingered and white-gloved Mickey Mouse hands into
four-fingered (plus thumb) human hands sans gloves. Woodcarver/dad
Geppetto, however, sports a full compliment of gnarly digits throughout
the film.
After a year of meticulous restoration, which included cleaning and
removing scratches from the original negatives frame by frame,
eliminating age-old distortions on the sound track, and revitalizing the
color, the now-pristine film was reissued in 1992.
Lampwick, the red-headed boy whom Pinocchio befriends at Pleasure Island is a caricature of Disney animator Fred Moore.
The theme song from Pinocchio, "When You Wish upon a Star," was ranked
#7 in the 2004 American Film Institute's List of the Top Movie Songs of
All Time, the highest-ranking song on the list among Disney animated
films.
June 2008 Ranked #2 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Animation".
Lux Radio Theatre on the CBS network, with Cecil B. DeMille
as the Presenter, broadcast a condensed version of "Pinocchio" on
Christmas Day, 1939. The program featured the performers who did the
voices in the film.
Carlo Collodi was
really Carlo Lorenzini, a journalist and rabble-rouser who settled down
to write children's stories. He took his pen name from the town of his
mother's birth, Collodi. When he originally published "Pinocchio" in the
form of a magazine serial, Lorenzini's intention was to kill Pinocchio
by having him hang himself. At the suggestion of his editor, Lorenzini
added chapters sixteen to thirty-two, giving the story a happy ending
and creating the character of the Blue Fairy.
The Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (as well as the prince in Snow White) was created by using the rotoscope technique.
Disney, more than any other studio, would effectively market re-releases
to take advantage of its films reaching each new audience generation.
And since virtually all its pre-1959 animated library are considered
classics, the studio is able to reap huge profits with the advent of new
media formats and limited-time purchase availability within a
particular format.
In 1940, Victor Young
conducted a four-record 78-RPM Decca album of the songs from
"Pinocchio". The album featured three songs eventually deleted from the
film before its release: "Jiminy Cricket"; "Turn on the Old Music Box"
and "Three Cheers for Anything". Cliff Edwards,
who did the voice of Jiminy Cricket in the film, was the only actor
from the movie who appeared on the album. Also featured were Julietta Novis (who sang the "Ave Maria" in Disney's Fantasia), The King's Men and The Ken Darby
Singers. It is also claimed that around this time, RCA Victor released
an album that was supposedly the actual film soundtrack of "Pinocchio",
but whether or not it really was the soundtrack has never been
confirmed.
The August 1993 issue of Playboy cited 43 instances of violence and
other unfavorable behavior in this film, including 23 instances of
battery, nine acts of property damage, three slang uses of the word
"jackass," three acts of violence involving animals, two shots of male
nudity, and one instance of implied death.
Due to the war, the movie was not released in either Germany or Japan
before the 1950s. In 1951, when the movie was released in Germany, it
was dubbed with rather unknown actors. Only Horst Buchholz,
as the voice of Lampwick, was to become famous in later years. In 1971,
the movie was re-dubbed along with other Disney classics such as Dumbo and Bambi. The original dub is now unknown in Germany.
Among the debris in the destruction house at Pleasure Island, a print of 'Leonardo Da Vinci''s "Mona Lisa" can be seen.
During the musical number "When You Wish Upon a Star," when a spotlight
is seen on Jiminy Cricket, one is able to see two books to the left of
the screen, which are "Peter Pan" and "Alice in Wonderland." Walt Disney
started developing these two stories for the big screen at the time of
this film's release, and they would be released in 1953 and 1951,
respectively.
Award-winning children's-book illustrator Gustaf Tenggren
helped create the European-storybook conceptual design, rendering town
streets and the undersea landscapes. His design sketches ultimately
influenced design work for Disneyland. Although Tenggren heavily
influenced the overall look of the film, he left the Disney studios
before the film was completed, and received no credit.
The animation of the sparkles produced by the Blue Fairy's magic were designed by abstract animator Oskar Fischinger, who was working on the "Toccata and Fugue" sequence of Fantasia.
Stromboli's wagon was a filmed model printed on cels and painted. A similar technique was used twenty years later in 101 Dalmatians.
When J. Worthington Foulfellow attempts to coax Pinocchio to go to
Pleasure Island, he gives the little puppet a card with an Ace of Spades
on it, calling it his "ticket". In popular myth and folklore, the Ace
of Spades is referred to as "The Death Card".
Despite the iconic nature of the scene in which Pinocchio's nose grows, it only happens once in the film.
Honest John's "real" name is given in promotional materials as J.
Worthington Foulfellow, but this name is never mentioned in the film
itself.
According to sequence director Jack Kinney, despite casting Christian Rub's
role as the voice of Geppetto, he was actually an irascible fellow who
drove the animation crew crazy with his ramblings about the glories of
Adolf Hitler. They eventually got even with him when they did the
live-action shooting for the scene with Geppetto fishing from inside
Monstro the whale. Here, they had Rub on a makeshift stage where he
pretended to fish while the stage was jostled by some grips who "rocked
the boat" to give the desired effect and effectively giving Rub a ride
he never forgot.
This was originally intended to be the studio's third film, after Bambi, but given the long, tedious process for that film, it eventually got bumped down in favor of this one.
Vintage Walt Disney World: ‘Pinocchio’ Characters Visit Magic Kingdom Park
posted on February 23rd, 2012 by Nate Rasmussen, Archivist, Marketing Resource Center
Seventy-two years ago today, Walt Disney Pictures’ “Pinocchio”
was released nationwide, causing kids and adults everywhere to watch
their nose whenever telling a lie.
The story of a wooden puppet who becomes a real boy captured the
hearts of moviegoers, and introduced Pinocchio, Geppetto, the Blue Fairy
and Jiminy Cricket who are now often seen in our theme parks. (Can you
even imagine Wishes without Jiminy as the narrator?)
In August 1978 at Magic Kingdom Park,
Pinocchio and Geppetto along with Stromboli, Lampwick, Gideon, J.
Worthington Foulfellow and the marionettes posed together in
Fantasyland.
While Stromboli and Lampwick are not often seen around the Disney Parks, if you do ever run into them just remember Jiminy’s advice and “always let your conscience be your guide.”
