Whale in pinocchio story movie#

Then I ran out of the theater, finding relief finally in the sunshine of a summer day, until my mother caught up with me.īack then, I did not know that a half-century later I still would be unable to escape Disney’s version of Pinocchio. But Monstro was there too, still gaping larger-than-life! I shrieked. I fled that balcony, seeking safety on the ground floor.

Whale in pinocchio story movie#

Three years-old in 1954, seated in a darkened movie theater’s balcony, watching Walt Disney’s re-released feature length cartoon, I was terrified. Suddenly, the giant creature was all I could see.

Wish Upon A Star: The Art of Pinocchio, brought to life by guest curator, John Canemaker, is a special exhibition on view until January 9, 2017.Monstro the Whale was going to swallow Pinocchio-and maybe me, too! The whale’s huge head was aimed right at me, its mouth yawning ever wider as Monstro prepared to attack. On Saturday, July 30th, The Walt Disney Family Museum is hosting a talk called “The Myth of Monstro and Other Whale Tales” featuringguest speaker Adam Ratner from the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA. Disney has done and therefore the best cartoon ever made.” Sparing no expense, Pinocchio would go on to be arguably-according to a 1940 review of Pinocchio in The New York Times-“the best thing Mr. Walt’s commitment to utilizing the most sophisticated technology at his disposal for Pinocchio’s many effects-driven sequences is evident in the final product. I would like to see a lot of multiplane on this.” The underwater stuff is a swell place for the multiplane, diffusing and putting haze in between, with shafts of light coming down. Then as the whale comes into another sneeze and the inhale starts drawing them back, they have to paddle hard against it. They get ready, and the sneeze blows them out. The sneeze stirs the water up so when they escape, the water is already rough and stormy. When he sneezed, it would slosh the water all around, and up on the sides, and it would drop down on Geppetto and Pinocchio like a shower. They would be shouting over the noise of the whale.

The whale would quiver before the sneeze and shake them around, throwing them off their feet onto the floor. They should react in a certain way-it would be the equivalent to the hiccups in the giant’s mouth.

We can get comedy out of the whale sneezing with Pinocchio and Geppetto inside. It should be the equivalent of the storm and the chase of the Queen in Snow White. This should be built to terrific suspense. “Pinocchio should use every ounce of force he has in his swimming to escape the whale. Toad (1949), and Maleficent in her dragon form in Sleeping Beauty (1959).Īccording to Bob Thomas, author of Walt Disney: An American Original, a Pinocchio story meeting in 1938 found an invigorated Walt bursting at the seams at the potential climactic scene unfolding in his imagination between Pinocchio, Geppetto, and Monstro: Reitherman was also responsible for the Slave in the Magic Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and would later be in charge of animating the colossal battle between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Stegosaurus in “The Rite of Spring” segment of Fantasia (1940), the Headless Horseman chase in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. This was an important collaboration, as Tytla’s departure following the animators’ strike in 1941 afforded Reitherman the chance to fill his role in animating intense characters and sequences. Wolfgang Reitherman, one of Walt’s Nine Old Men and a man known for directing many of the later Disney films of Walt’s era, was given the task of cleaning up the rough work by Bill Tytla-already in charge of the imposing and volatile showman Stromboli-and animating what would become the monumental Monstro. Kaufman, author of Pinocchio: The Making of the Disney Epic, details: “Monstro compounded the usual problems of convincing movement in animation: here the movement must not only be smooth but must suggest the sheer geographic area covered by the whale.” What made Monstro such a “murderous adversary,” according to exhibition curator John Canemaker, is his capacity to feel (not to mention his malicious intent!). The Dogfish is described as big as a “mountain” or “larger than a five story building,” which proved difficult for Disney animators to surmount (pun intended). Monstro-named after the Portuguese word for “monster”-traces his origins to Chapter 26 of Carlo Collodi’s original The Adventures of Pinocchio called “The Terrible Dogfish” (or Terrible Shark, depending on your preferred translation).