PINOCCHIO STARS IN PUPPET SHOW

Crickets being nocturnal insects, Jiminy has overslept and is late for his first day on the conscience job. Dashing along a street and at the same time – in a mind-boggling feat of animation – pulling on his jacket, tucking in his shirt and otherwise attiring himself on the fly, he stops for what he thinks is a parade only to realize it is his young ward in process of getting kidnapped. In more truly amazing animation during which the fox’s movement fills the screen viewed first from below then from above, Jiminy hops up Honest John’s tail and onto his top hat from which vantage to signal Pinocchio’s attention. Instead he gets discovered by Gideon, who produces his trusty mallet to clobber the bug but – dumbbell that he is – instead smashes the hat down over the fox’s head. While the kidnappers deal with this unfortunate situation, Jiminy appropriately ensconced in the blossom of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit manages to catch Pinocchio’s attention and advises him that fox and cat are the very temptation he pledged to avoid and he must proceed to school as planned.

Meantime with further sublime slapstick, Gideon extricates Honest John from his flattened hat by using his cane like a tire iron to pry the fox’s head out of it, which solution sends him flying against a nearby tree and sliding down into a puddle. Hastily recovering, the soggy villain searches for Pinocchio, melodiously calling his name. “Good-bye, Jiminy,” are the next words the flabbergasted cricket hears, only to see the puppet’s rear end advancing on down the street between those of his two abductors. His first impulse is to run back and get Geppetto, but deciding that to do so would be “snitching”, he dashes off in pursuit of them himself.

Cut to a longshot depicting a crowd gathered that night around a gypsy wagon-cum-puppet stage. Jiminy shoos the moths away from the flame of a streetlamp and takes a seat to watch the show. By way of judicious story-editing, the film skips entirely any depiction of fox and cat negotiating with the puppeteer: it’s just a done deal and we do not need to know the particulars.

Now for the first time we see Stromboli in action, and he is a fearsome sight indeed! In Collodi’s book he is called “Mangifuoco”, the “Fire-eater”, but according to Kaufman, Disney’s storymen soon re-christened him…

“…after the active volcanic island of Stromboli in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the north coast of Sicily (perhaps a reference to the character’s volatile temper)…”[1]

Bill Tytla, master of animating bulky solid forms such as the demon Chernobog in Fantasia (more later!), convinced fellow 260-pound animator Theodore (“T.”) Hee to model the puppeteer’s hefty threatening and violent behavior.[2] Also modeling was his voice actor Charles Judels (1882-1969), whose specialty was dialects and who also provides the cockney-accented voice of the Coachman – another heavy! – later in the film. In front of his golden rococo proscenium Stromboli introduces his marionette show with a big build-up of its star attraction the world’s only marionette without strings – Pinocchio. Jiminy kibitzes from the top of the lamppost.

Former puppeteer Bob Jones, now working in Disney’s new Character Model Department, performed a puppetshow for the edification of the Story Department, which proposed so many ideas that work on the sequence needed to get postponed until it could be edited down to a manageable length. It ended up the last part of the movie to be filmed.

As Walt directed, Stromboli’s is a caricature of a puppetshow, and a spot-on one at that! Spotlighted and stepping forward out of a bevy of unattached strings, Pinocchio himself alone initiates the song “I’ve Got No Strings”, but immediately falls down a flight of stairs, lands flat on his face and gets his nose stuck in a stagefloor knothole. Ominously, Stromboli’s temper begins to boil but simmers down at the sound of his audience’s delighted laughter. His star attraction extricates his nose and resumes.

In addition to the film’s many other sublimities, its abundance of subtle details in character acting are exemplified here by Frank Thomas’ animation: at first Pinocchio lacks any confidence in his performance ability, gesturing out-of-sync with the lyrics, twiddling a finger in the hem of his shorts, but his awkward timidity gradually dissipates as he senses his audience’s enthusiastic approval.

After Pinocchio’s solo, the rest of the performance consists of three distinct routines delineated between by the crashing descent of a new crudely-painted appropriate roll-down backdrop. Each of these dances features a brazenly coquettish female protagonist – Dutch, French and Russian – backed up by tandem-controlled dancers of the same nationality. The French ones are classic can-can marionettes who lift their skirts, kick and wiggle. Their number rouses amorous Jiminy Cricket to put on his spectacles and pay closer attention to the show.

The Russian chorus are Cossack trepak dancers, classic breakaway marionettes whose heads, arms and legs fly apart and re-assemble. Especially delightful is the unceremonious way all these figures are whisked on and off the stage from above. Since Stromboli remains out front conducting the pit band, a minimum of two additional puppeteers would have been required to manipulate such a performance, but really – who’s counting?!

Attempting the trepak himself, Pinocchio discovers he can kick his own butt causing a hollow clonking sound. Disastrously, he whirls into the dance and collides with the other marionettes. At the end, hopelessly tangled in a web of the Cossack puppets’ strings, Pinocchio finishes with a hearty though now inaccurate “I’ve Got No Strings on Me!” and brings down the house. Nose in knothole again, this time Pinocchio breaks the floorboard off and its jagged edge gives him a bearded appearance like those Cossacks. Cheering from the crowd! Gold coins rain down on Stromboli and his little wooden star. Amazed at this success, Jiminy doubts his own convictions and morosely slinks away into the night muttering, “What does an actor need with a conscience anyway?”

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[1] Kaufman, J.B.: op. cit., p.89.

[2] Culhane, John: op. cit., p. 166.