Pinocchio (Two-Disc 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition)

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This Disney masterpiece from 1940 will hold up forever precisely because it doesn't restrain or temper the most elementalemotions and themes germane to its story. Based on the Collodi tale about a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy, Pinocchio is among the most magical, mythical, and frightening films to come from the studio in its long history. A number of scenes make permanent impressions on young minds (just ask Steven Spielberg, who quoted the film more than once in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and the songs ("When You Wish upon a Star") can't be beat. --Tom Keogh
Stills from Pinocchio (click for larger image)

Product description

PINOCCHIO: 70TH ANNIVERSARY PLATINUM ED

Review

Many film historians describe the film as the most beautifully realized and technically perfect of all the Disney animated features.
The film cost $2.6 million in 1940, but using the same techniques and processes, it would cost well over $100 million today.
The film required the talents of 750 artists, including animators, assistants, layout artists, background painters, special effects animators, and inkers and painters, who produced more than 2 million drawings and used some 1,500 shades of paint for the Technicolor production.
In the book the movie is based on, the character of Jiminy Cricket was unnamed, appeared in only a few chapters, and was squashed by Pinocchio.
Some believe the Blue Fairy was modeled after Marilyn Monroe but Monroe was only 14 at the time. The real-life model was Marjorie Babbitt, a dancer who had earlier enacted the part of Snow White for the animators.
Story concept for the movie was difficult. One day Walt Disney decided to scrap five months' work including animation and start over because it wasn't right.
The movie is based on the serialized stories of journalist Carlo Lorenzini written in 1881 for a children's illustrated weekly in Florence, Italy. Two years later, the stories were compiled into a book, The Adventures Of Pinocchio Tale Of A Puppet.
Jiminy Cricket became the film's most popular and enduring character appearing in subsequent Disney films and television shows, including Fun and Fancy Free and the Mickey Mouse Club.
Gustaf Tenggren, an award-winning illustrator, was assigned to the production to give the film the kind of lavish European storybook flavor that Walt Disney envisioned.
The movie won an Academy Award for best score and best song, When You Wish Upon A Star. --Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, ISBN13: B001ILFUDC ISBN10: B001ILFUDC Material Type: dvd