Disney,1938-1941

Abstract

Abstract Walt Disney chose for his second and third features two stories that were strikingly different from the Grimms ‘ “Snow-White.” The Grimms provided him with a simple and serviceable plot but no characters to speak of; moreover, the version of the story in the Grimms ‘ book was only one of many variations. The Adventures of Pinocchio: The of a Puppet had only the loosest sort of plot, but it was far more fixed, as a literary entity, than “Snow-White.” The story, by Carlo Lorenzini, writing under the name C. Collodi, appeared as a book in Italy in 1883. It had first been published as “The Tole of a Puppet” in weekly installments in a children ‘s publication, and it had the episodic structure that periodical publication invited. Collodi ‘s Pinocchio is like a picaresque novel for children, with a rogue-hero-Pinocchio, the puppet brought to life in the book ‘s opening pages-whose misbehavior leads him from one fantastic adventure to another. For Disney ‘s purposes, Collodi ‘s impudent protagonist was, in contrast to the characters in “Snow White,” all too distinct. “One difficulty in Pinocchio,” as Disney said on 3 December 1937, in one of his first meetings with the film ‘s writers, “is that people know the story, but they don ‘t like the character.” Although the book ‘s Pinocchio suffers spasms of regret, he often repels sympathy-and his inhuman qualities are, in fact, central to what little structure the story has: it is by subduing his weaknesses that he earns his transformation into a real boy.