Pete’s Dragon is a musical feature film from The Walt Disney Company. It is a live-action movie but its title character, a dragon named Elliott is animated. It is about a young boy named Pete (played by Sean Marshall) who enters a small fishing community in Maine in the early 20th century. His only friend is a dragon Elliott, who also acts as his sentinel.

Elliot is only seen by those who believe in him. He is generally visible only to Pete, which occasionally lands Pete in trouble with the locals.
Also featured in the film are Helen Reddy, Mickey Rooney, Jim Dale, Red Buttons, and Shelley Winters. The film was directed by Don Chaffey, and the songs are by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn. The song “Candle on the Water” received an Academy Award nomination, and Helen Reddy’s recording (with a different arrangement than the one her character sings in the film) was released as a single by Capitol Records, reaching #27 on the Adult Contemporary charts.

Different versions:
This film has had a difficult release history. In its original roadshow theatrical release, the film ran 134 minutes. Shortly after, the film was re-edited to 121 minutes. For its initial home video release, the movie was cut again to 104 minutes, severely edited and time-compressed, eliminating the “Candle On The Water” number. When it was re-issued to video, the film was restored considerably to 128 minutes—the most notable change being an alternate version of the musical number “I Saw A Dragon”, different from the one that was seen in the premiere version—this has become the version most widely seen today on video and DVD. For its 1984 theatrical re-release, the film was further cut to 101 minutes, and finally the network television version was cut down to just 94 minutes. It is not known whether or not the original 134-minute cut still exists in the Disney archives or if the complete version could be reconstructed.

text taken from wikipedia