Walt Disney’s Pinocchio is one of the great moral fables that American cinema has gifted the world. I understand that Disney based his studio’s second animated feature on an Italian literary classic—Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio—but, truth be told, that book is rarely read in complete form in the English-speaking world. Disney’s version is the primary text through which most of us in Canada or the United States know the Pinocchio story. It is also the version by which we tend to measure others, whether it is Robert Zemeckis’s vapid 2022 live-action remake for Disney, Guillermo Del Toro’s darker, stranger version (and one more faithful to Collodi) from that same year, or even the numerous allusions that recur in science fiction cinema, from Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Walt Disney’s Pinocchio is the version that permeates North American culture, in slight and profound ways. The film remains a source for referential jokes (I love the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin riffing on the earlier Disney animated character). It also still operates as a cultural marker with wide recognition, such as in Jordan Peterson’s popular lectures on psychology and meaning.
When assessing the significance of Disney’s Pinocchio, however, it is not just that Walt Disney got his hands on a good story and, through his legacy company’s firm grip on our pop culture, perpetuated it until today. It is also that Disney and his team of storyboard artists and animators pared down and reshaped Collodi’s episodic novel into a version that is more accessible and likeable, archetypal in its narrative direction and simplicity, and vivid in its moral guidance. This is the Disney animated film at its most mythic and allegorical and, thus, enduringly powerful. What is perhaps most impressive, however, is that all this is conveyed just beneath the surface of a breezy animated movie with jovial musical numbers, some gorgeously animated scenes, and a wealth of funny, beloved cartoon characters.
As everyone knows, Pinocchio wants to be a real boy. One night, the Blue Fairy visits the home of the old puppet-maker, Geppetto, and his marionette made of pine becomes a living creature of sorts, one who thinks and makes choices and acts, but who is innocent to the point of being naive. The Blue Fairy gives Pinocchio the gift of life but she doesn’t make him “a real boy”—at least, not yet. The film suggests that our living bodies alone do not make us human; we are something more than just creatures.
Pinocchio must journey through the dangers and temptations of life and prove himself true. How? As the Blue Fairy says, (and as most of you readers can repeat, I’m sure): “If you are brave, truthful, and unselfish, someday you will be a real boy.” The simplicity, clarity, and power of that command and promise speaks to adults and children alike. We are made true and complete not only through our nature but also, and more importantly, through our choices and actions in the world.
That world is a dangerous place that preys on the innocent. This is the great challenge of growing up. On his first walk to school, the naive Pinocchio is almost instantly scooped up by con artists—the fox, “Honest” John, and Gideon the Cat. With the promise of fame, he is sold into servitude in the entertainment industry to the puppeteer, Stromboli. In contrast to the bravery, truthfulness, and unselfishness that the Blue Fairy enjoins, the film presents evil, through the various wicked characters Pinocchio meets, in the form of lies, deceptions, selfishness, laziness, and cruelty to others. With the aid of his externalized conscience, Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio must navigate between the Two Ways.
Watching (and rewatching) many childrens’ movies with my young boys in recent years, I have been reminded how useful, yet actually rare, clarity and elegance are in storytelling for children (or anyone really). In comparison to recent animated works, often manic and over-stuffed, Pinocchio works so well because of its brevity and simplicity, which allows its moral allegory to be understood by even small children. Take, for instance, Pleasure Island. Lured in by the Coachman, Pinocchio and the other “stupid little boys” are allowed to do whatever they want there, and they literally make “jackasses,” that is donkeys, of themselves. On the margins of the sequence are strange, dark figures, hairy demons of sorts carting children-turned-donkeys off to slavery in crates labelled “salt mines” and “circus.” A life beholden to selfish desire can enable one to be exploited by an often cruel and selfish world. In a twenty-first century rife with instant gratification through the Internet and smartphone technology, this is a profound and still useful reminder.
The dark edges around the film’s moralizing, such as the unsettling imagery of the hairy demon figures operating in the shadows of Pleasure Island, help prevent the film from being mere sugar-coated sermonizing for children. Furthermore, the film’s willingness to confront, in moments, the darkness of the world and the nature of evil gives the moral fable spiritual weight.
There are images of strange and lasting power in Pinocchio. For example, at various points, a large and superficially charming man—Stromboli, the Coachman—leers intensely into the faces of the characters before him and thus into the face of the viewer. We can almost smell the breath of Stromboli, who has just crunched into a raw onion, and we see its effect in the tears in Pinocchio’s eyes. Later in the film, the fearful Coachman reveals a demonic face to Honest John and Gideon in the seashore tavern in a moment that scared me as a kid. The film cautions us that the world is dangerous not just because other people might pursue their own selfish interests; evil can also come in the form of genuine malevolence, suddenly and shockingly revealing its ugly face. The sudden intrusion of such moments, which evoke the sting of genuine evil, contribute much to the film’s effect and message.
While some have criticized Pinocchio as instilling a meager ethics of “follow the rules, work hard, and be nice,” and while some have tried to dismiss Disney’s Americanized version with a label like “bourgeois” or “middle class,” the ultimate moral of Disney’s film moves far past niceness, etiquette, and conventionality. Pinocchio goes above and beyond normal moral expectations and the ethics of individualized self-help, particularly in his search for his lost father, Geppetto. Pinocchio will have to redeem his father, to bring him back, and it will cost him dearly.
The last act of Pinocchio involves a descent to the underworld followed by an act of self-sacrifice. Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket walk the bottom of the sea looking for Geppetto, who, a note from the Blue Fairy has informed them, has been swallowed by the great whale, Monstro. We see the child rescue the father from the Belly of the Whale, from the Underworld, from the jaws of Hell, but at the cost of the child’s own life. Ultimate bravery, truthfulness to those we are bound to, and unselfishness are found in the Christ-like act of self-sacrifice. In chapter 41 of the Book of Job, God declares his mastery over all creation, including the sea monster Leviathan. “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?,” God asks Job (41:1, ESV). This passage influenced medieval visual representations of the mouth of Hell and the Ransom Theory of the Atonement, and we can see parallels in elements of the final act of Pinocchio. Pinocchio’s sacrifice is the ultimate test for him that results in his victory and his resurrection by the Blue Fairy. His dying to redeem his father is the proof of his bravery, truthfulness, and unselfishness, and it is that act which ultimately makes him real. It is a testament to Disney and his studio that a cute wooden-boy cartoon with Mickey Mouse white gloves and a talking cricket sidekick is able to tap such layers of meaning. There has never been another cartoon so profound and deep, which, in my view, is the heart of the spiritual significance of Pinocchio. — Anton E. Bergstrom (3Brothers Film)(2025)
Arts & Faith Lists: