Pinocchio

Disney shut the picture down in 1938 and threw out 2,300 feet of finished animation; the AFI Catalog says it had missed the feeling he wanted. On the restart the puppet moved from an angular, stick like figure to a rounded boy, and the cricket became the story’s guide. Hamilton Luske and Ben Sharpsteen supervised, with separate directors on the sequences. Do not strain to hear Mel Blanc. He recorded Gideon the cat over sixteen days, the filmmakers then made the cat mute, and all of it went except a single hiccup. Dickie Jones was twelve when he voiced the title role. The Walt Disney Family Museum times the misty approach to the inn at sixteen seconds on screen, built from as many as nine celluloid levels and shot by five people across forty six consecutive hours. It won Music (Original Score) and Music (Song), the first animated feature to take a competitive Academy Award, yet failed to earn its cost back once the war closed the European and Asian markets. A good fit if you accept an ending where he saves Geppetto from the whale at the cost of his own life and the Blue Fairy answers with a reward. Not for a parent unwilling to sit beside a small child while boys become donkeys and get sold.