Pinocchio
About Pinocchio
Geppetto carves Pinocchio. The puppet comes to life, gets Geppetto arrested, burns his own feet, and is given new ones. He helps children steal fruit, spends a night tied to a doghouse, and is hanged by thieves until the Turquoise Fairy cuts him down and gives him money. A fox and a cat talk him into planting it, then steal it. He escapes jail on a rope of sheets, is swallowed by a whale, and finds Geppetto in the stomach. A cannonball later carries him home. Lucignolo takes him to the Land of Toys, where they grow donkey ears and turn into donkeys. The fairy changes him back. At supper the puppet body drops and Pinocchio stands up human.
Cast & crew
More about Pinocchio
Giulio Antamoro directed the first film of Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel for Società Italiana Cines. It opened in November 1911. Ferdinand Guillaume, the comic Polidor, plays Pinocchio. Natalino Guillaume plays Lucignolo. Augusto Mastripietri plays Geppetto. Lea Giunchi plays the Turquoise Fairy. A Finnish filmography gives the original length as 1,350 meters, or 1,203 meters in a censorship record, with 1,086 meters surviving.
Themes
In film history
It is the first film taken from Carlo Collodi's book.
Making
Guillaume was already Cines's short-comedy face. Antamoro put him in a long farce built from a few of Collodi's chapters and a run of circus gags.
Reviews
Cineteca Milano calls this the Pinocchio least faithful to the novel and the most unsettling, and credits Guillaume for that tone.
Audiences
On its Italian release it did well, and a shortened version was sold abroad.
Preservation
In 1994 the original negative was found at the Cineteca Italiana in Milan and restored. Of an original 1,350 meters, or 1,203 in the censorship file, 1,086 meters survive. Later screenings have used cuts timed at about 30, 42, and 50 minutes.
Notes
- Cineteca Milano says little of Collodi remains beyond Mangiafuoco, the cat and the fox, the whale, and the Land of Toys.
- The Indian attack, the Canadian soldiers, and the cannonball flight across the ocean are the film's own episodes.
- In 2018 a 42-minute restoration was screened at the Teatro Zorrilla with live music by the band Miclono.
- Time reported in 2002 that a 30-minute version had been found and restored.
- Export titles include Hippeltitsch in Austria and Germany and Piñoncito, aventuras de un títere in Spain.
Scenes
- Thieves hang Pinocchio from a tree. The Turquoise Fairy cuts him down.
- Inside the whale he finds Geppetto, and they get out.
- He rides a cannonball across the water and home.
- At the table the wooden body falls and a human Pinocchio is standing.
Influenced by
- Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Pinocchio (1911).webm)
