Disney Feature Films: Pinocchio or Don't be a Jackass

For this second  major feature by Disney Pinocchio (1940) starts with the same idea of the book, still as an introductory element in the movie, but this time it is all animation, unlike Snow White that the first shots where live-action. Another deviation is that the first character is the good character of the movie: Jiminy Cricket, who is mostly an analogous scheme. Pinocchio really is a morality story more than geared toward entertainment (although it is a lot more exiting than Snow White). After the introduction of Jiminy Cricket, we get the whole creepy dance sequence with Gepetto and the cat and the fish, Gepetto then, instead of praying to god, he prays to a star. Which is very angelic but really is a very basic theological concept, not confined with religion, maybe this was a way for Disney to try to appeal to a broader audience. The fairy (mostly monochromatic) grants the wish and brings Pinocchio alive. Really, Gepetto only has Pinocchio for an evening after falling asleep and sending him off to school before Pinocchio gets lost, so Gepetto was mostly in love with the idea of a son than with the son itself.

The next day Pinnocchio goes off to school, and we see the whole town dressed in a very deliberate complementary  orange and green scheme. This is when we get the introduction of our first two bad guys. The fox and the cat dressed in opposite triad schemes, these to are the physical representation of their personality. And what I like a lot about Pinnocchio is that we go into this world were everything out of the ordinary, or fantastical, is explained. The film does explain that people become physical metaphors of their actions, so its not uncommon to see the fox and the cat running around most of the time. So, Pinocchio happily follows the dark side of the f.. sorry the easy path and does his thing and gets imprisoned by the very "tasteful" caricature of a gypsy.

After being helped by the fairy again, the very white fairy, he then goes back to his house but gets sidetracked by the bad influence again (even tho he was already told by Jiminy not to) and goes off to hell. Then again, after giving into temptation, he turns into what he is behaving as. After that, again, rescued by Jiminy, he goes off to find his dad which has gone looking for his idea of a son, and of  course he takes the cat and the fish with him, which in a modern setting could translate into "friends" or "FRIENDS."

The next sequence, the underwater sequence, is my favorite in the movie. It must have been a groundbreaking animation achievement. It really looks like that was the foundation for Disney's next movie: Fantasia. It looks like it started the Pixar's tradition of introducing characters from their next movies  (Pinocchio's little infatuated fish friend). And again, the movie establishes the rules of the world when Jiminy Cricket gets trapped in a bubble while in the ocean, the bubble starts to fill with water, the bubble pops, and Jiminy panics, but then remembers that he can actually breath underwater. It's those little details that make Disney fantastical worlds so believable.  Then cut to Gepetto inside the whale Monstro's gut starving to death, but somehow breathing, but as established earlier, air must not be as important in that world.
After Pinnocchio and Jiminy get swallowed,  and Gepetto fished them out, Pinnocchio gets the idea to sneeze their way out (he did have this experience when he got sick while smoking). And then, the whole wonderfully drawn chase by monstro, the effect of the water splashing all over, layed out on top of the original drawing (the precursor of digital ambient effects). After which, Pinnocchio dies. And like all good Jesus figures, the son of the carpenter resurrects because of his good deeds and becomes real. Gepetto of course celebrates with a dance.

Disney Feature films: Snow White or Who did the Dwarf worked for?

I abandoned this blog for quite a while, I really did not had any consistent theme to have posting here in regularly. But in a stroke of luck, and faith, I recently read The Alchemy of Animation by Don Hahn; it really inspired me to re-watch the Disney feature films. After watching the latest Disney film, I thought, why not just watch all 56?  So as of today, I will watch all of them, plus 14 pixar movies, in chronological order. Tall order, but should be an interesting one.

Note: this will be my thoughts of the films, not a review. And I will try my best to cast a light on the aspects I know about color, composition, mood, and cultural reflection of the time. again, to the best of my knowledge.

Starting with Snow White, released in 1937, it was the first feature film of Disney, and the first animation to win an oscar. Right from the start, Snow white introduces the viewer to the idea that this cartoon should be watched as a live action film. The first minutes of snow white is no animated, rather a real book, which welcomes us into the fantastical world.
I love the tridimensional effect of the moving camera, achieved I believe by placing glass panels at different levels and pointing the camera at them. After being introduced quickly to the plot , wich I find interesting that the first character we see is the evil witch (by means of the mirror), rendered in a complementary yellow-green/red-violet scheme, we then get quickly the love story and the reason of why Snow White needs to leave the castle (which seems to be populated only by three people and the wondering prince).
We see here the first attempt to have a more realistic and les Anthropomorphic quality to the world. It is only in the delusion and panic in the escape of Snow White that the plants take on a human form.
After Snow White realizes that she was surrounded by "friends" and got ashamed of being scared; which I don't blame her, after all, she just found out the queen wanted her killed (at this point, we don't know her relationship with snow white just yet). She then finds the house of the "little bachelor's men"she of course does what every woman (or mom) should, and cleans the house.
We are then introduced to the dwarfs, which are dressed in earth tones, and for the most part complementary. We get the whole bit of the confrontation and introduction between them and Snow White. At first the dwarfs seem smitten by Snow White, but she then quickly becomes a maternal figure (maybe the dwarfs are more like a different species like in Tolken's books). But in any case the dwarfs then ask her to tell a story and she tells them her encounter with the prince. She describes him and he basically is the opposite of the dwarfs, with the exception of them all being good. The dwarf even seem eager to learn that the prince is what they are not, but again, maybe they aren't really human.
I saw that the movie is more concerned with entertainment and simple basic lessons like be clean, don't talk to strangers, be kind, and vanity is wrong, and less with being politically correct. Which nobody was concerned about at the time.
After the queen learns the location of Snow White, and presumably imprisons and kills the hunter (I think the skeleton is the hunter) she goes and does her evil thing with Snow White. We get the confrontation with the witch, using weather as a visual and audio cue of violence, instead of actually showing any. The prince, absent for most of the film, comes and kisses Snow White to life. Incidentally, the only thing that the prince did was being really handsome, and singing very good. The prince and Snow White leave the dwarfs (who looked after her and were then abandoned) and live happily ever after.