With the voices of Cliff Edwards, Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Walter Catlett, Charles Judels, Evelyn Venable, and Frankie Darro, the film follows a wooden puppet, Pinocchio, who is created by an old woodcarver, Geppetto, and brought to life by a blue fairy.

The production was supervised by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske, and the film's sequences were directed by Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, and Bill Roberts.

Pinocchio was a groundbreaking achievement in the area of effects animation, giving realistic movement to vehicles and machinery as well as natural elements such as rain, water, lightning, smoke, and shadow.

The next morning, while walking to school, Pinocchio is led astray by con artist fox Honest John and his sidekick Gideon the Cat.

After Jiminy unsuccessfully tries to free his friend, the Blue Fairy appears, and an anxious Pinocchio lies about what happened, causing his nose to grow.

Meanwhile, a mysterious Coachman hires Honest John to find disobedient and naughty boys for him to take to Pleasure Island, a notorious and infamous place.

Honest John, despite the legal risks and the Coachman's implication of what happens to the boys, accepts the job out of fear, and finds Pinocchio, persuading him to take a vacation on Pleasure Island.

At Pleasure Island, without rules or authority to enforce their activity, Pinocchio, Lampwick, and many other boys soon engage in vices such as vandalism, fighting, smoking and drinking.

In September 1937, during the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, animator Norman Ferguson brought a translated version of Carlo Collodi's 1883 Italian children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio to the attention of Walt Disney.

[12] The writers decided to modernize the character and depict him similar to Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy,[13] but equally as rambunctious as the puppet in the book.

Ward Kimball had spent several months animating two sequences—a soup-eating musical number and a bed-building sequence—in Snow White, which was cut from the film due to pacing reasons.

However, it was eventually decided that Gideon would be mute, so all of Blanc's recorded dialogue was subsequently deleted except for a solitary hiccup,[28] which was heard three times in the finished film.

[35] Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh believe that the male protagonists of films like Pinocchio and Bambi (1942) were purposefully constructed by Disney to appeal to both boys and girls.

For Sammond, the purpose of Pinocchio is to help convey to children the "middle-class virtues of deferred gratification, self-denial, thrift, and perseverance, naturalized as the experience of the most average American".

"[40] Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has spoken about the film in his lectures extensively, citing it as an example of "the manner in which great mythological and archetypal themes inform and permeate narrative.

[48] The film was re-issued on DVD and one final time on VHS as part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection release on March 7, 2000.

[56][57] Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times gave the film five out of five stars, saying "Pinocchio is here at last, is every bit as fine as we had prayed it would be—if not finer—and that it is as gay and clever and delightful a fantasy as any well-behaved youngster or jaded oldster could hope to see.

"[58] Time magazine gave the film a positive review, stating "In craftsmanship and delicacy of drawing and coloring, in the articulation of its dozens of characters, in the greater variety and depth of its photographic effects, it tops the high standard Snow White set.

"[59] Variety praised the animation as superior to Snow White's writing the "[a]nimation is so smooth that cartoon figures carry impression of real persons and settings rather than drawings to onlooker."

In summary, they felt Pinocchio "will stand on [its] own as a substantial piece of entertainment for young and old, providing attention through its perfection in animation and photographic effects.

[60] The Hollywood Reporter wrote "Pinocchio is entertainment for every one of every age, so completely charming and delightful that there is profound regret when it reaches the final fade-out.

This was primarily due to the fact that World War II and its aftermath had cut off the European and Asian markets overseas, and hindered the international success of Pinocchio and other Disney releases during the early and mid-1940s.

[34] To date, only six other Disney films have made this achievement: Mary Poppins (1964), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), and Pocahontas (1995).

The 1992 re-issue was digitally restored by cleaning and removing scratches from the original negatives one frame at a time, eliminating soundtrack distortions, and revitalizing the color.

[75] Despite its initial struggles at the box office, a series of reissues in the years after World War II proved more successful and allowed the film to turn a profit.

[81] The general consensus of the film on the site is "Ambitious, adventurous, and sometimes frightening, Pinocchio arguably represents the pinnacle of Disney's collected works – it's beautifully crafted and emotionally resonant.".

Figaro, Geppetto's kitten, primarily animated by Eric Larson, has been described as a "hit with the audiences", which resulted in him making appearances in several subsequent Disney short films in the 1940s.

The story details her origins as Chiara Belmagio, a baker's eldest daughter and philanthropist in the small Italian town of Pariva, her complex relationship with her narcissistic younger sister Ilaria and her eventual transformation into a fairy.

[110] A live-action adaptation[111][112] directed by Robert Zemeckis who also co-produced and co-written with Chris Weitz,[113][114][115] and stars Tom Hanks as Geppetto, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Pinocchio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jiminy Cricket, Cynthia Erivo as the Blue Fairy, Keegan-Michael Key as Honest John, Luke Evans as the Coachman and Lorraine Bracco as a new character named Sofia the Seagull.

[123] Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, Geppetto, Figaro, the Blue Fairy, Honest John and Stromboli appear as playable characters in the video game Disney Magic Kingdoms, along with some attractions based on locations of the film.