The pull of Pinoc­chio – How an Ital­ian fairy tale became a pop cul­ture staple

Back in 1976, dur­ing ini­tial con­ver­sa­tions with Bri­an W Ald­iss about his short sto­ry ​‘Super­toys Last All Sum­mer Long’, Stan­ley Kubrick gave the writer a copy of Car­lo Collodi’s nov­el ​‘Pinoc­chio’. The beloved children’s fan­ta­sy had chimed loud­ly with Kubrick’s nascent con­cept for a sci­ence fic­tion movie he was devel­op­ing from the Ald­iss story.

Kubrick’s con­cept, which Steven Spiel­berg even­tu­al­ly realised in 2001 as AI: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, emphat­i­cal­ly under­lined the Col­lo­di con­nec­tion. ​‘Pinoc­chio’ isn’t sim­ply allud­ed to in AI, it’s the dri­ving force of a futur­is­tic fable about a robot boy seeks out the Blue Fairy in the hope that she might grant his wish to become a ​‘real’ boy. In some­thing of a sto­ry­telling echo, Spielberg’s first sci-fi fea­ture, 1977’s Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, is thread­ed with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ences to Disney’s 1940 ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Pinocchio.

While Kubrick was devel­op­ing his inter­pre­ta­tion of ​‘Pinoc­chio’ through­out the 1980s and ​’90s, oth­er high-pro­file film­mak­ers were sim­i­lar­ly look­ing to Collodi’s source mate­r­i­al. Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la intend­ed to frame the source text as a con­tem­po­rary war sto­ry set in Bosnia dur­ing the armed con­flict that occurred in the ear­ly ​’90s. Coppola’s premise cen­tred around a group of chil­dren in the war­zone hav­ing ​‘Pinoc­chio’ read to them. From the few accounts avail­able about the unre­alised project, Cop­po­la was sup­pos­ed­ly inter­est­ed in the theme of lone­li­ness first and foremost.

The cen­tral con­ceit of Collodi’s nov­el cer­tain­ly sug­gests abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties for visu­al spec­ta­cle and char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion: per­fect ingre­di­ents for a movie. The sto­ry offers a clear and appeal­ing mix of gen­res, too: adven­ture and fan­ta­sy over­lap as Pinocchio’s jour­ney becomes suf­fused with an ocean’s‑worth (look out for that big blue whale!) of cul­tur­al imagery.

Disney’s cel ani­ma­tion, direct­ed by Hamil­ton Luske and Ben Sharp­steen, found dynam­ic ways to visu­alise the idea of a child ven­tur­ing into a world in which inno­cence gives way to expe­ri­ence. The film­mak­ers made some last­ing alter­ations, too: the char­ac­ter typ­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied as the Blue Fairy is described as ​“the Fairy with indi­go hair” in Collodi’s nov­el. Intrigu­ing­ly, in devel­op­ing their adap­ta­tion of ​‘Pinoc­chio’, Walt Dis­ney and his team recog­nised that a device in which Pinoc­chio was to be con­front­ed by anoth­er ver­sion of him­self (his con­science) was clum­sy storytelling.

Dis­ney returned to the source mate­r­i­al and was drawn to a fleet­ing moment in which a crick­et attempts to warn Pinoc­chio of the per­ils of liv­ing sole­ly for the sake of a good time: ​“Woe to those boys who turn against their par­ents… soon­er or lat­er they will repent bit­ter­ly.” Hacked off by the cricket’s moral­is­ing, Pinoc­chio crush­es the inter­fer­ing insect. Dis­ney decid­ed to resus­ci­tate this minor char­ac­ter, mak­ing him the con­science – and heart­beat – of the film.

Pinoc­chio has not gone away: his image is ubiq­ui­tous in pop­u­lar cul­ture and the sto­ry con­tin­ues to attract an array of film­mak­ers. Guiller­mo del Toro is cur­rent­ly work­ing on an ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion for Net­flix and, as recent­ly as Decem­ber 2019, Matthew Garrone’s live-action take on the sto­ry was released in Italy. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Garrone’s ver­sion stars Rober­to Benig­ni as Gep­pet­to; in 2002 he direct­ed his own live-action adap­ta­tion. Then, in Jan­u­ary of this year, Robert Zemeck­is was announced to be mov­ing ahead with a new ren­di­tion for Dis­ney, the direc­tor hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly snuck the mar­i­onette who dreams of becom­ing a real boy into 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Fuelling the fan­ta­sy of ​‘Pinoc­chio’ is the notion of what it is to be trans­formed, both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly, and cin­e­ma so often excels in sim­ply show­ing things hap­pen­ing; in bring­ing forth an out­ward view of an inner life. Disney’s mag­i­cal film reflects the dizzy­ing poten­tial of the medi­um, where­by moments of delight and real ter­ror exist side by side.

The visu­al spec­ta­cle sug­gest­ed by ​‘Pinoc­chio’ offers film­mak­ers a vast scope in terms of work­ing with plot devel­op­ments that flip-flop between com­fort­ing flight of fan­cy and unset­tling trau­ma. As demon­strat­ed by Dis­ney, there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty when tack­ling Collodi’s nov­el to com­bine cut­ting-edge visu­al sto­ry­telling with the tra­di­tion­al delights of the fan­ta­sy-adven­ture genre; all wrapped up in a sto­ry about grow­ing up. In that col­li­sion, per­haps, is the source of a cer­tain kind of age­less stay­ing power.