Disney's Pinocchio (1940)

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mikey m

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Just watched the R1 70th AE of this last night.
Brilliant :) A timeless classic.

The transfer/restoration is superb.
I thought scenes like Lampwick turning into a donkey is actually still as scary as hell :eek: :cry: His desperation as his hanRAB are replaced by hooves and then his cries for help replaced by donkey noises is just.... :eek:
So is Monstro :eek:


I think there are some stereotypes in it (it was 1940 though), like in the 'I've Got No Strings' scene.
When You Wish Upon a Star is beautiful :)
I wonder why the Coachman doesn't pay for his crimes, it always struck me because Foulfellow says he could get in trouble with the law and the Coachman ignores him. The boys were bad but the Coachman was pure evil.

I laughed at scenes like Foulfellow trying to read the book but he's holding it upside down :D
 
Did you spot the 2 little bits of dialogue that are missing from the soundtrack?

Check out "Give a Little Whistle".

When Pinocchio starts to fall off the table the line of Jiminy shouting "Watch out" is not there.

This and the other line are missing from all dvd's and Blurays except the UK Bluray .

Been a while since I read up on it but there was no explanation as to why it was missing.

Even the dvd supplied within the UK Bluray package has the lines missing even though its on the Bluray.
 
I don't think there has yet been an explanation as to why "watch out" is missing. I think it was a gaffe by the restoration.

And yes, it is a fantastic film. I agree, Lampwick's transformation is scary even to this day, but its somehow done "tastefully", not like some would probably portray it today to the "desensitised youth".
 
I noticed the missing dialogue too, it's missing even on the R1 "restored theatrical soundtrack", in fact, 2 lines are not present. Nothing major, but still a curious omission.
1) Jiminy Cricket's "Right!" to Pinocchio's utterance of his name during the 'Give a Little Whistle' song is missing.
2) "Watch out, Pinoke!" as Pinocchio falls off the table, is also missing as you say. Perhaps it was a restoration gaffe or wasn't on the original track.
 
You know, disturbing as the donkey transformation scenes were, I can remember thinking he was better off being a real donkey than a fake boy :)

I'd really like to see this again though, it must've been at least 15 years since I last saw it.
 
The UK Blu Ray is the only version in the world that still has that piece of dialogue in it and thats the way it should be! Blu Ray is the future. Take Snow White & The Seven Dwarves for example, its the first release in the new Diamond Series this year and its getting released on Blu Ray 7 weeks before the DVD release! Nearly 2 whole months we will have it before standard DVD users are able to get hold of it. Jump aboard now guys, get onboard with Blu Ray and enjoy the ride!!!!!!!!
 
It's obviously just a restoration mistake. Btw the restoration is glorious to behold in HD. It does NOT look like it was made in 1940 and yet all the brilliant subtleties of the classic animation are all still there. So much care and attention flying off the screen. The only thing is that, even though they've cleaned up the sound, it's always going to sound old! Not that it shouldn't.

I'm looking forward to renting every Disney classic as it comes on on Blu-ray so I can revisit them with adult eyes. It's amazing how many things you catch in Pinocchio that you didn't get as a kid and how 'shocking' some of it is in today's sanitized world. The thing is, does anyone actually care about the kid characters smoking and drinking?? No. Surprisingly, we're all intelligent enough to understand that it's just a story. IMO all the PC bollocks just goes to make people more frightened of things. Maybe that's what the world governments want though...
 
Whether it was a restoration mistake or not does not answer the question as to why its on the British Bluray but not the American Bluray nor any of the dvd's.

You would have expected the Bluray from both countries to be from the same master.






The 7 week announcement was for the US market - I've not seen anything yet to confirm if this will apply in the UK too where the Bluray market seems to be moving slower.

One interesting thing is that the US Bluray will once again include a dvd with the package meaning that if you buy the Bluray you can also have a dvd of it 7 weeks before the masses
 
That's very odd. As you say wouldn't the Platinum DVRAB/BRAB be from the same master? At first I thought that dialogue simply wasn't on the original mono track, so I switched to 5.1 but it wasn't on that either. Weird...
I don't have a BD player yet, and specifically bought the US DVD as it was the only DVD (AFAIK) with the restored mono.
 
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