The Moviegoer

The story of Pinocchio, the little puppet who finally becomes a real boy, is a natural for Walt Disney, for the creation of life where there was none before is his own specialty as well as Geppetto's, the wood-carver. Dwelling lovingly over each faltering step Pinocchio makes toward boyhood, Disney has created a character far more moving than any child actor of flesh and blood has ever drawn. When Disney has oiled up his last joint, and taken the last squeak out of his hinges, here is a boy worthy to be the son of warm-hearted old Geppetto.

With Pinocchio comes a host of new sketches for the Disney gallery. Well out in front, striding along with a jaunty step, is Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio's "official conscience." A worldly-wise fellow with a good heart, he nurtures his puppet-ward watchfully but without sentimentality. Montro the Whale is living proof that a glob of blubber covering the screen, with an eye in the middle, can with a sneeze inspire both terror and laughter. J. Mortimer Foulfellow, who is a hair-brushed and Oxford-accented Big Bad Fox, is not only a contemptible villain, but a social satire of no mean acidity. It may be a 20th-century, streamlined job--this "Pinocchio"--but the old familiar tale is robbed of none of its genial moralizing and pathetic humor.