Pinocchio Part 22A

This scene is more exposition. We see Monstro for the first time, see Geppetto's circumstances inside the whale and learn that he is near starvation.

Because Geppetto only has mute animals to talk to, the exposition is naked. Geppetto can't verbally interact with anybody, so he's forced to spell out the information as directly as possible for the audience.

There is some exposition that's visually communicated. We see that Monstro is huge, based on his size relative to the fish and the size of the bubbles he emits in shot 1 as well as his size relative to a full sized boat in shot 2. Geppetto and Figaro both sneeze, foreshadowing Pinocchio's later sneeze and what it inspires. Cleo, nosing around the bottom of her bowl for food, pushes up some rocks that end up looking like tombstones, a visual comment on the threat of starvation.

Eric Larson gets all of Figaro here and Fred Moore does most of Geppetto, with Bill Shull picking up shot 4.3. All that's required of the animators in this sequence is to play the single attitude of despair. It's stated economically, but we don't spend a lot of time looking focusing on Geppetto's mental state. Here's a case where the stage business - petting the cat, checking the fishing line - works against the emotion in the sequence. Geppetto is facing death and still has no idea what's happened to Pinocchio, yet his animation and the choice of shots don't emphasize his anguish all that much.