Pinocchio. Norman Ferguson. 1940.
I’ve never seen this one, but I’ve seen excerpts from it every Xmas (on a couple of channels), so I’ve heard the intro song more than a 80 times, and I’m feeling very Xmas-y now.
You can say many things about Disney, but at least they took really good care of all the stuff created under their auspices. So this Bluray looks really good, and in its original aspect ratio.
I find the animation somewhat confusing, though. That is, I thought that Disney was better at this stuff? Like, the fox villain character just… doesn’t look all that good.
Film critic Leonard Maltin said, “with Pinocchio, Disney reached not only the height of his powers, but the apex of what many critics consider to be the realm of the animated cartoon.”
See? It’s not that good.
It was a box office disaster upon release, which doesn’t surprise me. The character animation just doesn’t seem to be as accomplished as the 30s Disney shorts. But the background stuff and the effects are very nice.
The story is also… Well, it makes absolutely no sense, so I guess they justified it as “a parable”. It gets rather tedious. But the first half (before the plot, as it is, gets going) our is kinda nice.
Popular movies in February 1940 according to IMDB:
| Poster | Votes | Rating | Movie |
|---|---|---|---|
 | 984 | 7.7 | Charlie Chan in Panama |
 | 95739 | 7.5 | Pinocchio |
 | 1146 | 7.5 | Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet |
 | 1607 | 7.4 | Broadway Melody of 1940 |
 | 606 | 7.2 | The House of the Seven Gables |
 | 2081 | 7.0 | My Little Chickadee |
 | 826 | 7.0 | Young Tom Edison |
 | 244 | 7.0 | Blondie on a Budget |
 | 573 | 6.8 | Vigil in the Night |
 | 391 | 6.8 | Castle on the Hudson |
This blog post is part of the Decade series.