When the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein saw Disney's',' he called it the greatest filmever made. High praise from a man whose 'Battleship Potemkin' thentopped lists of great films.

In 'Snow White' (1937), Eisenstein saw anew cinematic freedom: Cartoons could represent any visual an artist couldimagine. They were no longer shorts for kids, but worthy to stand besiderealistic feature films.In 1940, Disney made its second and third cartoon features,' and 'Pinocchio,' and they are generallyconsidered to this day to be the best of all the studio's animated films.Perhaps they're so good because they came at just the right time in thedevelopment of animation. Theearly pioneers ( and Max Fleischer in particular) found ways to maketheir characters something more than just drawings on a screen-to make themseem to exist in a world of gravity and dimension. They experimented endlesslywith how an animated character should move, finding a new kind of stylizedrealism that carried conviction without mirroring the real world. The animationexpert Ernest Rister writes: 'I wonder if they knew that finding atechnique for investing a drawing with a sense of weight and volume wouldsomeday be used to create killer bugs or a giant snake in the Amazon.' Afterthe breakthrough of 'Snow White,' the Disney animators went back totheir storyboards with a couple of innovations up their sleeves. One was thefreedom to imply that there was space outside the screen.

In'regular' movies, characters were half-seen at the edges, theyentered and exited, and the camera panned and zoomed through additional space.Early animation tended to stay within the frame. In 'Fantasia' andespecially 'Pinocchio,' Disney broke out of the frame, for example inthe exciting sequence where Pinocchio and his father are expelled by thewhale's sneeze, then drawn back again, then expelled again. There is thepalpable sense of Monstro the Whale, offscreen to the right.Anotherinnovation was the 'multiplane camera,' a Disney invention thatallowed drawings in three dimensions; the camera seemed to pass throughforeground drawings on its way deeper into the frame. There is an aerial shotof Pinocchio's village in which the camera zooms past levels of drawings, untilit arrives at a closeup. This was much better than using only simpleperspective to show depth.Theseinnovations were not much noticed by 'Pinocchio's' audiences: Theywere drawn in by the power of the narrative.

Affordable space adventures ending. The story of the little puppet andhis quest to become a real boy is a triumph of storytelling with a moral. Haspopular culture ever produced a more unforgettable parable about the dangers oftelling a lie? The story is just plain wonderful. It contains elements thatwould be refined into the Disney formula (Figaro the cat and Cleo the goldfishwould be recycled into countless comic relief sidekicks), but its main storyline is designed with almost diabolical cunning to reach children.

Visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro teams up with goth illustrator Gris Grimly and the Jim Henson Co. For this stop-motion version of Carlo Collodi's classic tale of Pinocchio. Pinocchio Now a part of the celebrated Walt Disney Signature Collection, the timeless story of Pinocchio inspires a new generation with its masterful animation, award-winning music and unforgettable characters!

Thekey is Pinocchio's desire to become a 'real little boy,' not just awooden puppet that can walk and talk without strings. At a very deep level, allchildren want to become real and doubt they can. One of the film's inspirationsis to leave Pinocchio more or less on his own in the process of becoming. He'ssupplied with a father figure in Geppetto, the kindly puppetmaker, but the oldman is forgetful and easily distracted. And he has Jiminy Cricket, who appliesfor the job of being Pinocchio's conscience, and gets it, without beingterribly well qualified.

What Geppetto, the Blue Fairy and Jiminy do is providea vision for Pinocchio-an idea of what he should strive toward. But the BlueFairy warns him she will only help so much, and the other two aren't much helpat all.Kidsknow they should be good, and know they are weak when tempted. Pinocchio standsfor all of them as he sets off for school and allows himself to be diverted byFoulfellow and Gideon. This twist comes as a surprise: The movie has opened ona gentle, mellow tone, with 'When You Wish Upon a Star' andGeppetto's bedtime play with the puppet and friendship with Figaro and Cleo.The Blue Fairy's magical visit is enchanting. Jiminy is a cheerful new friend.Andthen suddenly Pinocchio is blind-sided by the two con men who supply him toStromboli, the vile puppeteer. He finds himself starring as a puppetsong-and-dance man ('I've Got No Strings'). Jiminy, who is not agifted analyst, shrugs and figures that since Pinocchio is a star, he doesn'tneed him anymore ('What does an actor want with a conscience,anyway?'

Why doesn't Jiminy know how worried Geppetto will be? Maybecrickets don't understand human love.Pinocchiotries to escape, is locked in a cage by Stromboli, is visited by the BlueFairy, and then (in one of the best movie scenes ever filmed) tells her liesand finds that his nose grows and grows and grows. Finally it sprouts leavesand gains a nest with two chirping birds in it. Glance sideways at childrenduring this scene, and you'll see kids utterly fascinated by the confirmationof their guiltiest fears.TheBlue Fairy grants a reprieve, but Pinocchio lands back in the soup, scooped upby Foulfellow and shanghaied to Pleasure Island, where little boys smoke, playpool, and are recycled into mules for the salt mines ('Give a bad boyenough room and he'll soon make a jackass of himself'). Through thepoisons of tobacco and their sins, they grow ears, hooves and snouts; how manykids decided right then and there never to smoke? Pinocchioand Jiminy escape and return at last to Geppetto's, only to find (in a powerfuland gloomy scene) that the old man is gone.

Pinocchio feels abandoned, and inthe audience the eyes of kids grow large and moist. The Blue Fairy, deus exmachina to the last, sends a dove with the information that Geppetto is captivein the belly of Monstro the Whale. That leads into the last great actionsequence, where Pinocchio proves himself at last. The climax is a cascade ofvisual imagination. Everyone remembers Monstro's thrashings after Pinocchiosets a fire to make him sneeze. But the action is preceded by a long andmagical sequence in which the puppet and the cricket wander the ocean floor,encountering fish, sea flowers, coral denizens and other delicately drawncreatures.'

Pinocchio'is a parable for children, and generations have grown up remembering the words 'Letyour conscience be your guide' and 'A lie keeps growing and growinguntil it's as plain as the nose on your face.' The power of the film isgenerated, I think, because it is really about something.

It isn't just aconcocted fable or a silly fairy tale, but a narrative with deep archetypalreverberations. (',' ' and' share that quality, and so do the scenes involvingDumbo and his mother.)Oncewe've grown up and learned, or ignored, the lessons of the film, why does itcontinue to have such appeal? It may be because of the grace of the drawing.Later Disney films would have comparable skill, but not the excitement ofdiscovery. Is it possible to sense, through thousands of individual drawings bydozens of different artists, a collective creative epiphany? I think so.Disney's loyal animators had been there in the early days when Mickey Mousecartoons were patronized by Hollywood as kid stuff from a dinky side-streetshop. They must have known they were making something great. Their joysaturates the screen.

Whatthe Disney shop did with its first animated features has resonated through filmhistory. Ernest Rister says in a letter: 'I cannot tell you how many oftoday's computer graphics artists have the book Disney Animation: The Illusionof Life at their work stations.' All modern animated content in movies,from Jabba the Hut to ',' springs from those years ofinvention at Disney, he says: 'The same principles apply everywhere, andthose principles were all discovered under one roof, decades ago by a bunch ofyoung punks jazzed up about creating something.' Andthat's no lie.