Friend Schickel, in his exemplary book The Disney Version, noted that Nelson Rockefeller, owner of Radio City Music Hall, chastised Walt Disney because every time the Music Hall showed a Disney cartoon feature, kids peed from fright so regularly that the seats had to be reupholstered. Such was the fear factor of Snow White, Bambi, Dumbo and this film in alerting children to the dangers of separation from a parent. Of all those primal horror homilies, Pinocchio is tops for its blending of the animator’s craft and a theme—that a child is not human until he can feel loss and act with spontaneous generosity—that can move viewers of every age, and for all ages. Now, for the first time since Steamboat Willie in 1928, traditional animation is dormant, replaced by the CGI geniuses at Pixar. I miss the greatness of the old format, which could persuasively mix barnyard critters with human motion and emotion. I wish, upon a star, that it could return.
All-TIME 100 Movies
TIME's Richard Corliss updates our All-TIME 100 list of the greatest films made since 1923 — the beginning of TIME — with 20 new entries
Pinocchio
Full List
Behind the List
A - C
- Aguirre: The Wrath of God
- The Apu Trilogy
- The Awful Truth
- Baby Face
- Bande à part
- Barry Lyndon
- Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Blade Runner
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Brazil
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Camille
- Casablanca
- Charade
- Children of Paradise
- Chinatown
- Chungking Express
- Citizen Kane
- City Lights
- City of God
- Closely Watched Trains
- The Crime of Monsieur Lange
- The Crowd
D - F
G - J
K - M
N - P
Q - S
T - Z
Great Performances
Guilty Pleasures
- Gone With the Wind, 1939, Victor Fleming, U.S.
- Tenth Avenue Angel, 1949, Roy Rowland, U.S.
- Sailor Beware, 1951, Hal Walker, U.S.
- Diabolique (Les Diaboliques), 1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot, France
- School Girl, 1971, David Reberg, U.S
- There’s Something About Mary,1998, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, U.S.
- Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, Otto Preminger, U.S.
- Gun Crazy, 1949, Joseph H. Lewis, U.S.
- The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957, Jack Arnold, U.S.
- Joe Versus the Volcano, 1990, John Patrick Shanley, U.S.
10 Best Soundtracks
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