--- title: "Pinocchio" year: 1940 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/pinocchio" fi1m_score: 88 critics_score: 85 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-17T05:55:00.784391+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T05:55:12.711121+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Pinocchio (1940) Directed by Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Norm Ferguson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts · 1h 28m · MPA G · Animation, Family, Fantasy **Fi1m score: 88** · Critics 85 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* The one Disney film where the lesson is ‘trust nobody’, and it takes eighty-eight minutes to prove it > Disney’s second feature is still the strangest and most frightening thing the studio ever put its name to, a fable about a child who is lied to by every adult he meets. The animation has hardly dated; the Blue Fairy and the kitten have. ## Synopsis In a hillside village, the old woodcarver Geppetto (Christian Rub) finishes a marionette, names him Pinocchio, and before bed wishes on a star that the puppet might be a real boy. The Blue Fairy (Evelyn Venable) grants half the wish: Pinocchio (Dick Jones) can walk and talk, but he must prove himself brave, truthful and unselfish before he becomes flesh. A homeless cricket in a battered top hat, Jiminy (Cliff Edwards), is sworn in as his conscience. Next morning Pinocchio sets off for school with an apple and a book, and is met on the road by a fox, ‘Honest John’ (Walter Catlett), and his mute sidekick Gideon, who talk him into a life on the stage with the puppet-master Stromboli (Charles Judels). ## Review Walt Disney’s second feature-length cartoon, released in Britain on 13 May 1940, has a reputation as the sweet one, the film with the song about wishing on a star. That reputation is a trick of memory. *Pinocchio* is a story about a newborn child sent out into the world with a conscience the size of a thumb, who is then lied to, sold, caged and nearly destroyed by almost every grown-up he encounters. It is a great film. It is also a film we would think twice about showing a four-year-old at bedtime, and we mean that as a description, not a complaint. The opening twenty minutes are as good as anything the studio has made. Geppetto’s workshop, with its cuckoo clocks and music boxes and a goldfish named Cleo, is drawn in a depth and warmth that most animation still cannot manage; the camera seems to move through the workshop rather than across it, and the light from the candles sits on the wood grain. Christian Rub voices Geppetto as a lonely, fussing old man rather than a saint, and Cliff Edwards gives Jiminy Cricket a small-time hustler’s confidence and a singing voice that sounds like it has been round the block. When he sings the lullaby in the dark workshop, the film goes quiet and simply lets him, and we found ourselves unexpectedly caught by it. Seven directors are credited, Hamilton Luske and Ben Sharpsteen among them, and the film is built from set pieces the way a stage revue is. That is its structure and its main weakness. Pinocchio leaves home, meets a villain, escapes, meets another. Dick Jones plays him as an eager blank, which is the point of the character, but it means the film’s centre is a boy who wants only what the last person told him to want. The story comes from Carlo Collodi’s novel and keeps its episodic shape; what the Disney writers add is Jiminy as a running commentary, and he is the reason the middle stretch holds together at all. The villains are what people remember, rightly. Walter Catlett’s Honest John is a fox in a shabby coat who talks the way estate agents talk, all warmth and no meaning, and his sidekick Gideon, voiced in a single hiccup by Mel Blanc, is a small masterclass in silent comedy. Then there is Stromboli. Charles Judels plays him as a bear of a man who laughs with his whole body, and the moment his laugh turns, mid-sentence, into a threat, and a wooden child is flung into a birdcage and locked in, we were frightened, and we are not children. The animators give him a physical weight no other Disney villain has had; when he moves, the caravan seems to tilt. What has not survived so well is the film’s idea of the good. The Blue Fairy, voiced by Evelyn Venable, is drawn like a department store illustration and moves like one; she floats in, scolds gently, floats out. The kitten Figaro and the goldfish are cute in the way the studio would later make a business of, and each time they appear the film’s temperature drops. Leigh Harline, Paul Smith, Frank Churchill and Edward H. Plumb are credited with the music, and the songs divide the same way: the star song and the cricket’s lullaby have lasted eighty years for good reason, while the marionette number is a jingle and knows it. The second half goes to darker places than the first, and we will not describe them, except to say that the film’s moral, that a boy who lies and idles will be punished, is delivered with a relish that most critics have chosen to call bold. We mostly agree. Once or twice it tips into cruelty for its own sake, and a child on the sofa may need a hand to hold. The colour throughout, an early and confident use of Technicolor, is the deep, slightly bruised palette of storybook illustration rather than the bright primaries the studio later settled on. Against *Snow White*, its predecessor, this is the more ambitious film and the better one, more finely drawn and far less certain that the world is kind. At 88 minutes it wastes little. Watch it with a child old enough to be scared and then to talk about it afterwards, which is more or less what the film is asking you to do. *Fi1m score 88, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Almost every critic recommends Pinocchio, and the praise falls in two places. First, the animation: the depth given by the multiplane camera, the early Technicolor, the painted backgrounds, the whale. Second, the story’s darkness. Several reviewers argue that the film trusts children with a grim fable and is better for it, and more than one places it above Snow White on every count but the songs. Jiminy Cricket is singled out again and again as the film’s best invention. The reservations are about the music and the sermon. Two of the earliest notices, from Sight and Sound and The New York Times, find the score the one weak department, which later critics do not share. Empire thinks the moralising heavy-handed for a children’s film and the animation showing its age. Time Out is the only mixed voice, admiring the whale and the background detail while disliking the goldfish and the fairy. Otherwise the spread is narrow. ### Reviews we read (11) - **Radio Times**, Tony Sloman (5/5): The critic marvels at the enduring sense of wonder in this tale of the wooden boy and his conscience, with characters that have become 20th-century mythology. The magnificent score including 'When You Wish Upon a Star' and the artistic use of early Technicolor are singled out for praise. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-slkpgs/pinocchio/) - **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (A): Praises the film as ahead of its time with a dark, moralistic fable and grim message that trusts young audiences, highlighting its painterly visual texture and depth on Blu-ray. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/pinocchio-1798205836) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): The 1940 Disney film is a triumph of storytelling with a moral, a parable about the dangers of lying that reaches children deeply through Pinocchio's journey. Ebert highlights the innovative animation techniques like the multiplane camera and the film's archetypal power and visual imagination. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-pinocchio-1940) - **Sight and Sound** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it the most perfect example of cartoon work seen on screen, a great advance on Snow White with lifelike animation and characters that breathe. Jiminy Cricket is singled out as an immortal creation, though the music is deemed pedestrian and uninspired. [Read](http://old.bfi.org.uk/features/ultimatefilm/chart/details.php?ranking=83) - **Slant Magazine**, Eric Henderson (90/100, inferred): Calls it Disney’s most powerfully dark vision with real gravitas, praising its handling of darker themes, dread and visual artistry over lighter elements. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/pinocchio/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, THR Staff (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a masterpiece superior to Snow White in technical achievement, conception and production, praising its charm, humor, drama, action and beauty that entertain all ages. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/pinocchio-review-movie-1940-1278957/) - **The New York Times**, Frank S. Nugent (90/100, inferred): Disney's second feature-length cartoon is a blithe, witty, fresh and beautifully drawn fantasy superior to Snow White in every respect but its score. It is the best cartoon ever made, a gay and clever delight for young and old alike. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1940/02/08/archives/the-screen-in-review-pinocchio-walt-disneys-longawaited-successor.html) - **Little White Lies**, James Clarke (80/100, inferred): The piece celebrates Disney’s 1940 animation on its 80th anniversary as a pop culture staple that dynamically visualises a child’s journey from innocence to experience. It highlights the lasting alterations to Collodi’s tale, such as elevating Jiminy Cricket as the conscience and heartbeat of the film. [Read](https://lwlies.com/in-praise-of/pinocchio-80th-anniversary-disney-stanley-kubrick) - **Empire**, Alan Morrison (70/100, inferred): The critic notes that the quality of Walt Disney's second feature still shines through decades later, praising its Academy Award-winning score and song while acknowledging that the moral preaching feels heavy-handed for a children's film and the animation shows its age. The characters and songs remain distinctive, though it is not ranked among the very top Disney classics, and it will still enchant younger viewers. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/pinocchio-review/) - **Time Out**, GB (50/100, inferred): The review describes the film as a rum mixture of the excellent and the awful, praising stunning animation of the whale and delightful background details while criticising the cute goldfish and odious fairy. It notes that Pinocchio reveals Disney’s virtues and vices more clearly than any other cartoon. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/pinocchio-1) - **Collider**, Victoria Luxford (90/100, inferred): The critic hails Pinocchio as Disney's only perfect animated film and greatest masterpiece, praising its technical wizardry in animation, moral message, and classic music like "When You Wish Upon a Star." [Read](https://collider.com/pinocchio-disney-movie-masterpiece/) ## Details - **Director:** Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Norm Ferguson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts - **Director:** Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Norm Ferguson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts - **Novel:** Carlo Collodi - **Music:** Leigh Harline, Paul Smith, Frank Churchill, Edward H. Plumb - **Producer:** Walt Disney - **Cast:** Dick Jones as Pinocchio / Alexander (voice) (uncredited); Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket (voice) (uncredited); Christian Rub as Geppetto (voice) (uncredited); Evelyn Venable as The Blue Fairy (voice) (uncredited); Walter Catlett as 'Honest John' Worthington Foulfellow (voice) (uncredited); Mel Blanc as Gideon (hiccup) (voice) (uncredited); Charles Judels as Stromboli / The Coachman (voice) (uncredited); Frankie Darro as Lampwick (voice) (uncredited) - **Runtime:** 1h 28m - **Certificate (MPA):** G - **Release (the US):** 23 February 1940 - **Genres:** Animation, Family, Fantasy - **Budget:** $3 million - **Box office:** $164 million ## Where to watch in the US - Disney+: streaming, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $19.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, IE, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1941: Best Original Score (won) ## If you liked this - *Spirited Away* (2001), Fi1m 92: Another child sold and renamed by strangers, and a bathhouse worth a hundred puppet shows — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/spirited-away.md) - *A.I. Artificial Intelligence* (2001), Fi1m 84: Spielberg’s version of the same wish, with the Blue Fairy taken entirely seriously — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-i-artificial-intelligence.md) - *Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio* (2022): The same story in stop-motion, set under Mussolini, and even less interested in comfort - *Kirikou and the Sorceress* (1998): A newborn boy sets out to fix a broken world; French-Ivorian animation, plainly beautiful - *The Night of the Hunter* (1955): Children pursued by a smiling adult who means them harm, shot like a storybook — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-night-of-the-hunter.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/pinocchio