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.
