Abstract
The story of Pinocchio has not only influenced the world of literature but had also an important impact on different forms of art.
Pinocchio’s charm is still very much alive, as is his morale. This paper is a short excursus through its screen adaptations. The best-known of them are shortly named in the abstract, the other ones are nominated in the full article.
The first time Pinocchio entered the movies as a protagonist was in 1911. A few decades later, Carlo Collodi’s story also succeeded in Disney’s movie set, where it turned into an animated film.
Pinocchio entered the small screen in the ’70s, interpreted by Andrea Balestri, in a miniseries directed by Luigi Comencini. Three decades later it was the turn of Roberto Benigni, who in 2002 realized his vision of Pinocchio, both as a protagonist and as a director. Years later Benigni joined the cast of a new film on Pinocchio, directed by Matteo Garrone and released in 2019, where he played Geppetto. This Benigni-as-Geppetto “Pinocchio” was previously nominated for a 2021 Art Directors Guild award for excellence in production design for a fantasy film and a 2021 BAFTA Award for hair and makeup.
2022 seems to be a revival for Collodi’s story: Disney will stream a new film based on his novel, starring Tom Hanks, while a dark reimaging of the classic fable Pinocchio from Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson, and Patrick McHale, will be released by Netflix in 2022 in an animation project.
Keywords: Pinocchio, Literature, Cinema, Performance, Archetype
Introduction
The Adventures of Pinocchio, the story of a memorable and unique character in Italian literature, of the wooden child who launches himself into life, between adventures and stumbles, discovering the sense of the family and fundamental values, has not only influenced the world of literature but had also an important impact on different forms of art. It is a unique case of uninterrupted reinvention (films, TV serials, comics, etc.) which has given an independent life to a literary character, sometimes obscuring the merits of those who created him.
At the end of the nineteenth century, it all began with the euphoric imagination of an Italian writer who wanted to transform a puppet into a real child: The Adventures of Pinocchio, a children’s book, published in 1883. Carlo Collodi, pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini, Italian writer and journalist, notable for the liveliness of the language and the humanity of his characters, is one of the most widely read and continuously admired children’s authors for his famous The Adventures of Pinocchio: the story of the puppet who will end up transforming into a flesh and blood boy continues to please readers of all ages and the most varied interests. The laboratory where Collodi is trained is within the newspaper editorial office. Here his humorous flair was born and his taste for observation for the polemical contrast, the sharp and piquant definition was refined.
It is indeed a great initiatory story that, with a language mere understandable to children, brings them closer to the archetypal world and therefore to the invisible matrix of all stories, to the primordial core of essential and ancestral truths, allegorical tales, and fairy tales that play at the same time with both the sublime and the grotesque to in fact tell much more about the nature of man and the inner journey that he is called to make in life.1
Pinocchio, or the archetype of migration: some characters, including Pinocchio, are intended to leave the text from which they were born to migrate into forms and genres different from the original (archetype). Some themes make Pinocchio a universal, timeless, and still modern fable: the process of awareness undertaken by Pinocchio, a great metaphor for the mature human condition; the transformative force of creativity, the only one capable of accomplishing the miracle of man’s emancipation; the relationship between man, society, and nature which, through the vicissitudes experienced by Pinocchio, makes the figure of the puppet an archetype: an archetype as old as man2.
In many traditions, it is customary to expose certain profound truths or the supreme archetypes in a seemingly simple, generic form. Through fairy tales, the child learns to discern evil from good. Fairy tales and stories are relational modalities, both positive such as sharing and solidarity, and negative, such as indifference and the banality of an everyday evil that very often stems from the boredom of not knowing how to create one’s individual fantasy world. Pinocchio itself is sculpted in the image and likeness of an Archetype.
Pinocchio is no longer considered just a fairy tale that reminds children to obey their parents and not tell lies, but a metaphor of the man who is prey to the passions by which he lets himself be guided, just like a puppet at the mercy of strings; it is not only a gallery of exquisitely and esoterically symbolic figures, but contains subtle suggestions on how to become free from oneself, from one’s nature as utopian puppets, seekers of human solutions, to break the own limits.3 The cruelties of the twentieth century and the recent events make the theme perennial actual.
The anthropological and socio-political mystery of the Italian identity or nature, so extroverted and inaccessible, seems to be a point of reference in Collodi’s masterpiece4. Pinocchio, an archetype of the Italians in the interior cavity of the whale is interpreted as a staple for critics, writers, artists, psychologists, but also cinematographers: we deal with a true Pinocchiology.5 ”A hundred years, fame extended to the whole planet and to all languages, the ability to survive unscathed from changes in taste, fashions, language, customs without ever experiencing periods of eclipse and oblivion”, wrote Italo Calvino in 1981 for the centenary of the publication of the first episode of Lorenzini’s work in ”Giornale dei Bambini”.
It seems that Collodi’s fairytale has its roots in what was the initiatory tale par excellence, namely Apuleius’s Metamorphoses - written in the second century after Christ -, or The Golden Ass. Lucio, the protagonist of Apuleius’ novel, will find himself transformed into a donkey. One night he dreams of the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose cult was still present in the Roman Empire in the first centuries after Christ and who, subsequently, was transfigured into the cult of the Madonna. The goddess will suggest to the protagonist transformed into a donkey to attend the procession in her honor, during which the officiants disguised themselves as animals, wearing a rose. In doing so, the goddess is the symbol par excellence of the eternal feminine, she recognizes it and magically returns it to the human form.
After these metamorphoses, one emerged reborn and transformed by all these processes which were maieutically propitiated by the divinity, a symbol of the eternal feminine who transmutes the conscience and the masculine in particular. The metamorphosis, a symbol of transformation and rebirth, puts us in direct contact with the soul of the world, often hidden in the simplest and most unsuspected appearances.6 We witness a series of transformations: humans into donkeys, which symbolize the prevalence of animal nature; puppets into a complete human being emancipated from this yoke, a phase in which the conscience is mechanically prey to its passions.
We also encounter some archetypal functions related to the characters: Pinocchio, the protagonist, represents the archetype of the Hero, of the Puer aeternus (The eternal child.)7 The Puer aeternus is the eternal child, a constantly evolving figure that is characterized by an enormous vital force and a sweet character, constantly looking for stimuli. His personality is characterized by great sensitivity and a strong propensity toward the other. The absence of personal history and in particular past experiences allows him to live in a continuously evolving dimension, where anything can happen.
He will learn the morals only when he will find himself in difficulty fearing for the safety of his Creator / Father in the belly of the whale. It is only then will he understand that with struggle, love, and having worked hard and honestly, there will be the possibility of becoming a human being.
The talking cricket embodies the archetype of the Mentor. This Archetype is usually a positive, noble, and wise figure, who guides people (and in particular the Hero) on the path of life. The Mentor can also be a negative figure and intersect with the Shadow Archetype. He can represent the Hero’s “point of arrival”, an aspiration; he is often a Hero of the past, or at least someone who has passed the tests of life and therefore transmits wisdom.8
Characters like Lucignolo (Candlewick), Mangiafuoco (the Fire-Eater), the Cat, and the Fox, who are antagonists, remind us of the Shadow archetype.9 Jung stated the shadow to be the unknown dark side of the personality.
Geppetto is related to the Senex archetype10, the wise old man in dreams and the collective unconscious, a type of character typically represented as a kind of older father-type figure who uses personal knowledge of the world to offer guidance. In literature, the sage often takes the form of a mentor or a teacher to the hero, playing a crucial role in the hero’s journey11.
The Blue Fairy refers to the Anima Archetype12. It will be her who will give Pinocchio, without judging him, a moral guide, and the possibility of having custody of the heart that will help him to form his soul. It is the eternal femininity, purged of any temporal trace; it is the idea of the virgin matrix of the cosmos as a force that gives nourishment and shape to the cosmos, shaping, measuring, repairing.
The themes of the fairytale cover quite different areas: from creation to the search for identity and completeness of the Self13; from the intergenerational relationship to the value of experience and integration.
Short excursus through the screen adaptations from the classic tale
Pinocchio’s charm is still very much alive, as is his morale. The first time Pinocchio entered the movies as a protagonist was in 1911: Pinocchio. In the golden age of silent movies, the puppet had the face of Ferdinand Guillaume. For an hour, the wooden puppet that old carpenter Geppetto manufactures in his workshop will live a thousand and one adventures: he will be judged, hanged, swallowed by a whale, taken prisoner by the Indians, saved by Canadian soldiers and, even, returned home mounted on a cannonball that flies through the sky. The Director is Giulio Antamoro and other names of the cast are Augusto Mastripietri (as Geppetto), Natalino Guillaume (as Lucignolo).
After a few years there is a new version of the story in a short production, Le avventure di Pinocchio (1915), also silent and in Black and White, from the company named Società Anonima Ambrosio.
Another transposition of the story, this time in an animation film, is Le avventure di Pinocchio (1936), with Directors Umberto Spano, and Raoul Verdini. The production of this film (which is their first one) began in January 1935, when politician Alfredo Rocco decided to commission the first Italian-produced animated movie at the newly formed studio CAIR (Cartoni Animati Italiani Roma). The publishing House R. Bemporad & Figlio from Florence had the copyright that the studio bought for the film. In 1935, the work was huge: 110000 drawings and an estimated budget of one million lire for an international distribution. During this first year, the film’s production staff had technical financing problems. The studio CAIR exhausted all the funds and ceased all the activity on the film with 150000 drawings and 105 minutes of animation. A few years later, Raoul Verdini, one of the animators of the production, fulfilled the end of the film and tried to convert it into color with the Catalucci system, but the film remained unfinished and became lost. The only proof of that film is the original script and several still images of various scenes.
A rather diverged adaptation of the plot was performed following the script of Nikolay Leshchenko, Lyudmila Tolstaya, inspired by Collodi and transposed by the Russian Director Aleksandr Ptushko (who also directed The Tale of Tsar Sultan, The Golden Key, and The New Gulliver) in Zolotoy klyuchik (1939). The voices belong to Aleksandr Shchagin, Sergey Martinson, Olga Shaganova-Obraztsova; the film was restored, with some alterations, in 1959.
A few decades later from the first appearance on the screens, Carlo Collodi’s story also succeeded in Disney’s movie set, where the best animation was pioneered and turned into an American animated film. It is the second in a series of Disney animated films, a series that began in 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It is a classic animated film with the most important box office of all time.
For this second full-length animated feature, Walt Disney Studios chose Carlo Collodi children’s classic Pinocchio (1940), with the sequence directors Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, and Wilfred Jackson. The story adaptation is due to Ted Sears and Otto Englander and voices are those of Dickie Jones as Pinocchio, Walter Catlett as J. Worthington Foulfellow, Frankie Darro as Lampwick, and Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket. Pinocchio is one of Disney’s most innovative and substantial films. People can see 1940 Pinocchio exactly like today’s animation and the audience would be equally responsive.
The wooden puppet boy who turns into flesh and blood has been presented several times on screen, but the Disney version remains the standard in our opinion. It seems that Jiminy Cricket is the major character in Disney’s film and is seen as an omniscient voice; he frames and narrates the story, and his moral conscience is imposed on Pinocchio and the audience. The Cricket provides all the excitement and makes the story of Pinocchio the puppet in a second plan14.
The Academy Award was given for Best Music, Original Song - Leigh Harline (music), Ned Washington (lyrics) for the song "When You Wish Upon A Star" as introduced by Cliff Edwards. Edwards was a major performer in the Twenties and early Thirties and introduced many popular songs like Singing in the Rain. The movie was also rewarded with the Hugo Awards, for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, to Ted Sears as a writer and Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske as directors, in 1941.
The Italian production Le avventure di Pinocchio (1947) is an obscure version of Collodi’s great children’s classic with Gianetto Guardone as director and a dialogue script by Gian Carlo Fusco and Gianetto Guardone; the distribution of the roles was with Alessandro Tommei as (Pinocchio), Mariella Lotti (as the Blue Fairy) and the well-known actor Vittorio Gassman as Il Pescatore Verde (Green Fisherman). This movie was a low-budget version and had no remarkable success, even if it included the presence of a famous actor such as Vittorio Gassman, who has a small role as a fisherman, but a charm of its own. Simple but effective costumes are used by the actors in the roles of the talking cricket, the cat, and the wolf. Augusto Contardi makes an impressive Geppetto, and Mariella Lotti is as lovely as the good fairy.
In 1954, a Black and White Brazilian TV Series in Portuguese, Pinocchio, produced by TV Tupi will be an almost unknown adaptation.
A few years after, in 1957, a TV Movie, a United States NBC Television Musical, a Black and White Rexall Production, Pinocchio, directed by Paul Bogart, created and staged by Yasha Frank, starred a very young Mickey Rooney, Walter Slezak, and Fran Allison was aired on the American home screens.
A color short East German animation will be released in 1959 by the Production company DEFA-Studio für Trickfilme: Pinocchios Abenteuer (1959). Directors of the production are Erich Günther, Carl Schröder, the script is written by Erich Günther, Carl Schröder and the voices belong to Ferdinand Felsko, Rudolf Fleck, and Lotte Gunner. A less known TV Mini-Series in 3 episodes, in Black and White, Le avventure di Pinocchio (1959), produced by RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, starring Carlo Chamby, Sante Calogero, Angela Cicorella will be released the same year.
In 1965, a color wild success of the CBS Television Studio 21 musical was produced by Prince Street Productions directed by Nick Havinga, in a TV Movie, Pinocchio. The fantastic adventure of Pinocchio is brought to life in this original adaptation from the creative genius of Jim Eiler and his company of actors, The Prince Street Players, starring Will B. Able, Wayne Adams, Robert Dagny, David Lile as Geppetto, and John Joy in the role of Pinocchio. Old Italy comes to life in this adaptation of the classic tale with colorful costumes, including the Land of the Toys and the interior cavity of a genuine Italian whale.
In the same year, in an entirely new concept by N. Prescott and Fred Ladd, directed by Ray Goossens, in Pinocchio in Outer Space (1965), he must prove himself as a real boy when he takes off to Mars with Nurtle in the capture of Astro, a flying killer space whale. Pinocchio turns back into a puppet by the Blue Fairy after he starts misbehaving again. In an effort to redeem himself and regain his boyhood, he decides to take on a mission to stop Astro, a giant space whale destroying the planet’s satellites15. The voices of the main characters belong to Peter Lazer, Arnold Stang, and Jess Cain.
The Director Zdenek Sirový and the screenwriter Anna Jurásková are the authors of a Czech transposition in a TV Movie, Pinocchiova dobrodruzství (1967), filmed in Czechoslovakia, with the voices of Ladislav Pesek (as Geppetto), Josef Beyvl and Frantisek Filipovský (after three years from the first Pinocchiova dobrodruzství II (1970), the Czech Director Zdenek Sirový returned with a second series of the TV Movie, casting the voices of the same actors from the first one). The same year, the East Germany production house, Deutsche Film (DEFA), brought a color adaptation, Turlis Abenteuer (1967), and the English version, based on the screenplay of Margot Beichler, Gudrun Deubener, and Walter Beck, directed by the same Walter Beck and by Ron Merk, cast Martin Flörchinger, Alfred Müller and Martin Hellberg. Toymaker Kasimir finished carving the puppet Turli, but soon after he comes alive, starts skipping school, and creates chaos at the puppet theater. Turli is finally caught by the evil Muriel, who turns lazy children into donkeys and makes them work for him. The fairy Euphrosina helps Turli escape so he can first rescue Kasimir, who was swallowed by a fish while looking for him, and then save the other children from Muriel’s clutches16. As a reward, Turli becomes a real boy. DEFA’s version of Pinocchio from 1967 is one of their darkest and also one of their best and perhaps most successful, and more faithful to the original fairytale.
De avonturen van Pinokkio (1968-1969), was a TV Series filmed and broadcast in the Netherlands, in Dutch, had one season for two years. The actors playing the main characters of this series were Wieteke van Dort (as Pinocchio), Jan Blaaser, and Ijda Andrea.
Also an adaptation, with a screenplay by Ernest Kinoy, of this tale to a color TV Movie, but this time a Musical is Pinocchio (1968) filmed and released in the USA, under the direction of Sid Smith, starring James Beard, Pierre Epstein, Burl Ives as Geppetto, Peter no one as Pinocchio and witnessing Anita Gillette’s debut in the role of the Blue Fairy.
Another type of transposition, written as a script by Chris Warfiel and Corey Allen, rated X, has nothing to do, according to us, with art: Pinocchio (1971), made in the USA, and it represents the worst of both genres: soft-core porn that is not erotic and comedy that is not funny. It was directed by Corey Allen, and the cast included the names Alex Roman, Monica Gayle, and Dyanne Thorne.
A slightly unknown color animation film, Un burattino di nome Pinocchio (1971), a collaboration between Italian and American cineastes, produced by Cartoons Cinematografica Italiana, involved a small team and a low budget. The film was directed by Giuliano Cenci and Jesse Vogel and had a screenplay written by the same Giuliano Cenci. The voices belonged to Lauro Gazzolo, Victor Jory and Roberta Paladini. Despite its limitations, it is considered by part of the public to be one of the best transpositions of Collodi’s puppet.
Pinocchio entered the small screen in 1972, Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972), interpreted by Andrea Balestri, in a TV miniseries directed by Luigi Comencini, produced by Cinecittà Studios, in Rome, and broadcast by RAI. Along with Balestri, in this production, there are well-known protagonists from the artistic world, such as Nino Manfredi (as Geppetto) and Gina Lollobrigida (as the Blue Fairy). Here, also, it is debated whether the fish is a shark or a whale. Perhaps it is a critical commentary on Disney’s choice of highlighting the Biblical subtext by changing Collodi’s “pescecane” into a whale.
Comencini models his film on his realistic reading of the novel of the world and gives the story a distinctively late-nineteenth-century Tuscan setting, highlighting the poverty and hunger that subtends the life of Geppetto and Pinocchio; the poverty of this period is a subtext for an analysis of the children living condition. He uses Collodi’s story to reflect the status of childhood, family relations, and education in contemporary society. In Comencini’s film, fairy-tale aspects are almost eliminated from the story.
The dark and intense TV Series Kashi no ki Mokku (1972) which was a collaboration between artists from Japan, the United States, and Canada and produced by Tatsunoko Production, starred the voices of Thor Bishopric, Francisco Borges, Rita Cléos.
Pinocchio has been the subject of an American musical starring Danny Kaye, 1976, the year when the first television musical adaptation of Collodi’s fairy tale, aired for the first time on CBS, with Sandy Duncan in the title role and Danny Kaye playing the role of Geppetto, Pinocchio, was produced by the American company Vidtronics. It was directed by Ron Field and Sid Smith.
Pikorîo no bôken (1976) an anime TV series from the same 1976, was created in co-production with ZDF and ORF, in Japanese and German Languages by the production companies: Apollo Film, Nippon Animation Co., Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)
Japan, West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Africa. The cast had the names of Helga Anders, Harald Baerow, Leo Bardischewski. A TV Movie about a Russian puppet from 1976 Priklyucheniya Buratino (1976), with Vladimir Basov, Rolan Bykov, Dmitriy Iosifov, Elena Sanaeva, Rina Zelyonaya in a remake in 1997, Noveyshie priklyucheniya Buratino, was produced in 1997 by Golden Key Entertainment and directed by Din Mokhamatdinov. The screenplay was inspired not only by Collodi’s text, but also by Alexei Tolstoy, who opens the same door to adventures, moral lessons, magic, and wisdom. Pinocchio's part is interpreted by Igor Vernik. Other actors performing in this movie are Kristina Orbakaite, Larisa Dolina, and Aleksandr Kalyanov. It is a fresh and amusing, delicate and unique movie.
An almost unknown TV Series of one season, Pinocchio (1978), produced in the United Kingdom and broadcast by BBC had as protagonists, among others, Derek Smith as Geppetto, Rosemary Miller as Pinocchio, Rhoda Lewis as the Blue Fairy, and Roy Macready as the Fox.
On Romeo Muller’s script, a TV Movie, a musical, Pinocchio’s Christmas (1980), was produced in the USA by the company Rankin/Bass Productions, directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. It is Pinocchio’s first Christmas, and he sells the book Geppetto gives him for present money, but Cat and Fox trick him out of it. The voices belong to Alan King as Maestro Fire-Eater, George S. Irving as Geppetto, Bob McFadden as the Cricket.
An adaptation by Nick De Noia that diverges from Collodi’s novel, but still preserves some elements and characters is The Stowaway (1981) produced in the USA by NBC Television Stations and by Unicorn Tales Inc., directed by the same Nick De Noia. This time, the main character is Peter (Alex Paez), who stows away on a ship from Italy, and arrives in New York, pursued by the ship’s captain. He is advised that he will find other Italians in Little Italy, so he goes there, where Geppetto (Sid Baird) takes him. He tries to be good but gets in trouble for stealing, so Jimmy the pizza man has to show him the way and get him to school.
A TV Movie, Pinocchio, filmed at Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis, USA, on a script by Timothy Mason and directed by John Clark Donahue and John Driver was released in 1982.
Faerie Tale Theatre: Pinocchio (1984) is a very interesting and emotional episode from the fairytales TV series, filmed in the USA on the locations of ABC Television Center in Los Angeles and produced by the companies Production Gaylord Productions, Lion’s Gate Films, Platypus Productions, with a very popular cast: James Coburn, Carl Reiner as Geppetto, Paul Reubens as Pinocchio, Lainie Kazan as the Blue Fairy. It seems to be a dark story but also an imaginative one. The teleplay belongs to Mark Curtiss and Rod Ash and the film was directed by Peter Medak.
The Adventures of Pinocchio (1984) produced by Century Video Corporation, American Way, Harmony Gold, and directed by Ippei Kuri and Jim Terry seems to be very unappreciated by the public. The adaptation story was written by Donald Paonessa, Angelo Grillo, and Kenji Yoshida, with the voice of Danielle Romeo as Pinocchio.
A Greek video, Pinokio, directed by Giannis Vranas, on a script by Anthi Petsopoulou, starring the same Petsopoulou, was produced in 1985. We have very little data about it.
Directed by Hal Sutherland and written by Robby London, Barry O’Brien and Dennis O’Flaherty, the American adaptation of 1987, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, produced by Filmation Associates has an impressive cast, through the voices of Edward Asner, James Earl Jones, Tom Bosley as Geppetto, Lana Beeson, Rickie Lee Jones as the Fairy Godmother and Scott Grimes as Pinocchio. Pinocchio’s Fairy Godmother turned Pinocchio into a real boy a year ago and his creator, Geppetto makes him a cake to celebrate, but Geppetto remembers that he must deliver a precious Jewel box to the Mayor. Pinocchio persuades Geppetto to allow to take the box and makes his way to the Mayor’s house. Pinocchio decides to take a peek at the Carnival and loses the Jewel box, despite Geppetto telling him not to go anywhere near it17. With help from the Fairy Godmother, Pinocchio eventually escapes from the Carnival to find the Jewel box. It seems that this film has never received the marketing blitz it truly deserved.
A very faithful to the original text version and most touching adaptation is the animation Pinocchio (1992), originally released by Trimark Pictures and subsequently by Golden Films and Goodtimes Entertainment companies, with a humorous and charming screenplay written by Roger Scott Olsen and the voices of Cam Clarke (as talking Cricket), Jim Cummings (as Geppetto), Jeannie Elias (as Pinocchio). The story is timeless, the music includes some well-incorporated classical music favorites like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Saint Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, Ride of the Valkyries, and Flying Dutchman Overture by Wagner, Debussy’s Clair De Lune, and Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
Another original adaption, filmed in Houston and Cinecittà Studio, and produced by Penta Distribuzione (a joint venture owned by Mario Cecchi Gori and Silvio Berlusconi) and Filmone Production companies with a script written by Francesco Nuti, Giovanni Veronesi and Ugo Chiti, OcchioPinocchio (1994) presents Francesco Nuti in a triple hypostasis: as writer, director and protagonist of the main character, Pinocchio. The other characters are somehow metamorphosed and the storyline does not preserve Collodi’s structures.
A video based on the same children’s novel appeared in the USA in 1995, as a Series entitled Great Classics on Video: My Very First Wizard of Oz Story Book, My Very First Pinocchio Story Book, My Very First Jack, and the Beanstalk Storybook. The texts were written by Rochelle Larkin and the production was directed by Douglas K. Ingber. The voices of the narrators belonged to Angela Marie Ingber and Stephen Cornine. The video was produced by Video Kids Inc., Ingber Television, and Video Associates Production companies.
The ‘90s is the period of Video Games. In 1996, Disney Interactive, NMS Software, and Virgin Interactive Entertainment produced a very interesting video game, preserving the characters from the Disney animation movie: Pinocchio (1996): it is an active adaptation of the classic Walt Disney Pictures animated motion picture and the famous novel by Carlo Collodi, directed by Dan Marchant. In this traditional action-adventure game, the player must guide either Pinocchio or Jiminy Cricket through various locations in the story such as Pleasure Island and Monstro the whale, in an attempt to assist Pinocchio in his quest to become a real boy18.
One of the most faithful transpositions of the original novel, and maybe underrated, even if the characters have suffered minor changes, is The Adventures of Pinocchio of 1996, based on the screenplay of Sherry Mills, Steve Barron, and Tom Benedek, filmed in Croatia, directed by Steve Barron and produced by New Line Cinema, Savoy Pictures, Twin Continental Films. Pinocchio is also in search of the completeness he needs, a search for identity which is the basis of the path of the hero, who experiences profound discomfort feeling himself a prisoner of a body that he does not recognize as suitable for his soul and personality. The cast has the voice of Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Pinocchio, Martin Landau as Geppetto, Geneviève Bujold, Udo Kier, Bebe Neuwirth, Rob Schneider, Corey Carrier, and David Doyle as Pepe the Cricket. The puppet of Pinocchio took Jim Henson’s Creature Shop 9 months to perfect, and it was operated by twelve people. Pinocchio's design was made by Angus Bickerton.
The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1999), directed by Michael Anderson, with a screenplay by the same Sherry Mills and Tom Sheppard (the perspective is reversed, and puppeteer Geppetto has now turned into a puppet himself after drinking an elixir that Pinocchio bought), was filmed in Luxembourg (Carousel Picture Company) and produced by Centurion Fries Film Group Creative Berlin Filmpartners. The cast includes once again Martin Landau as Geppetto and Udo Kier as Madame Flambeau. The part of Pinocchio is performed by Gabriel Thomson.
An animation TV Episode from Stories from My Childhood: Pinocchio and the Golden Key, relying on the same authors as starting point for the script (Collodi, Tolstoy), with an English adaptation by Chris Weber was aired in 1998 and had these voices of the main characters: Mel Ferrer (as Geppetto) in his last role, Joseph Mazzello, and Bill Murray. The episode was directed by Dmitriy Babichenko and produced by the companies Films by Jove, Jove Pictures, and Soyuzmultfilm.
The movie Pinocchio ovvero lo spettacolo della provvidenza (1999) is the TV version of Carmelo Bene’s stage, based on his adaptation. He plays the role of Pinocchio and Sonia Bergamasco plays the role of a Bambina. The movie was produced by the Italian Production companies Rai 2, Nostra Signora and by the Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma.
David I. Stern wrote the television story for Disney’s Geppetto (2000), the TV Disney Episode that has as protagonist Geppetto and that was filmed in Los Angeles. The lonely woodcarver Geppetto gets his wish for a child of his own granted when the Blue Fairy brings one of his marionettes to life, but being a parent is not as easy as he had expected. The main parts belong to Drew Carey as Geppetto, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Blue Fairy, Seth Adkins as Pinocchio, and Brent Spiner as Stromboli. The film was produced by James Pentecost Productions, Karz Entertainment, and Walt Disney Television19.
One of the most beautiful, impressive, and faithful to the original novel version is the Italian one, Pinocchio, Roberto Benigni’s vision of Pinocchio, as a screen player (along with Vincenzo Cerami), protagonist, and director, realized in 2002, with wonderful soundtracks by Nicola Piovani and amazing filming locations performed by Mediterranean Film Studios in Kalkara, Malta. The production companies involved were Melampo Cinematografica Cecchi Gori Group Fin.Ma.Vi. With Carlo Giuffrè as Geppetto, Franco Javarone as Mangiafuoco and a beautiful, shining, vivid and very colorful Blue Fairy played by Nicoletta Braschi. It is considered to be one of the most expensive productions in Italian film history, with a budget of about $45 million.
An Italian-British television miniseries Pinocchio consisting of two episodes was produced by Rai Fiction, Lux Vide, and the English production company Power. The miniseries is directed by Alberto Sironi and written by Ivan Cotroneo and Carlo Mazzotta. The two episodes were filmed in Tuscany and aired on Rai 1 in November 2009. Pinocchio is played by a child actor (Robbie Kay), who returns as a puppet only when he does not behave well. In addition to the classic characters, including Bob Hoskins’ Geppetto and Luciana Littizzetto’s Talking Cricket, there is also the character of Collodi played by Alessandro Gassmann.
In his struggle to become human, Pinocchio produced in 2012 is a delightful re-imagining of the classic family legend of the puppet that comes to life and experiences amazing adventures in an adaptation of the English version by Thor Bishopric, directed by Enzo D’Alò. The soundtracks are written by Jesse Pruett, and it is one of Lionsgate’s best productions. The production companies involved are 2d3D Animations, Cometa Film, and Iris Group. The voices belong to Gabriele Caprio as Pinocchio, Mino Caprio as Geppetto, Rocco Papaleo as Magiafuoco.
The Italian Video Pinocchio in LIS released in 2013, with Gabriele Caia and Mirko Santoro, is the result of the research and production of the Dipartimento di studi Linguistici e Culturali comparati, Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia.
A distant adaptation movie, on a script by Alexandra Maxeiner and Anna Justice, starring Mario Adorf as Gepetto, Florian Lukas as the Cat, Sandra Huller as the Fox, was produced by FFP New Media Productions in 2015. Pinocchio’s wild escapades lead him into a series of dangerous adventures, from joining the circus to visiting the insides of a whale.
A little-known Czech adaptation, directed by Stepán Gajdos and starring Igor Ondricek as Geppetto, Vica Kerekes, Pavel Reznícek, and the voice of Samuel Sadovnik as Pinocchio was released in 2015.
In 2019 Benigni joined the cast of a new film on Pinocchio, directed by Matteo Garrone, where he played Geppetto. An Oscar-Nominated Hair and Make-Up Team made famous the inventive Italian director Matteo Garrone and a real cinematographic performance on a screenplay by Massimo Ceccherini and Garrone, starring Federico Ielapi, Rocco Papaleo as the Cat, Massimo Ceccherini as the Fox, Gigi Proietti is Mangiafuoco, the French actress Marine Vatch is the Blue Fairy, and Davide Marotta, the Cricket. Garrone is a visionary filmmaker who reinvents one of the most famous stories in the world. The film - an international Italy / France co-production - is produced by Archimede with Rai Cinema and Le Pacte, in association with Recorded Picture Company.
The director remained faithful to the text, even if he restricted it for the needs of transmutation from the literary to the filmic language; the evocative and effective visual means he put in place to conduct this transmutation, effectively reveal the archetypes that reverberated from the famous work. Behind the almost illustrative fidelity to the pages of Pinocchio, he releases all its evocative power; the director enacts one of the major archetypes, namely that of the disguise in the most modest of forms. Garrone confesses that he has always felt something familiar in that story, as if the world of Pinocchio had penetrated his imagination, so much so that many have found traces of his Adventures in his films.20 His film work, able to move with ease among the peaks of the European and world cinema, brings the viewer, unconsciously, closer to that archetypal world whose elusive existence we guess in the small synchronic epiphanies that sometimes appear even in our daily lives. It is a world of eternal archetypes.
Through his magical-fairy tale, Garrone creates a fantastic world full of mysteries, wonders, amusing and exciting moments and brings us closer to all of them, managing in perfect balance the sublime and grotesque registers, precisely because it is through the latter that often, paradoxically, the archetypal world is expressed. The director wanted to transfigure the actors into anthropomorphized animal forms, with the help of Mark Coulier, so that they would immerse the viewer in a world as close as possible to allegory and paradox, a register in which archetypes are hidden. He stated that the film was created to address the children, but we tried to imagine it so that it would reach everyone, children and adults. For Roberto Benigni, it is a film to be seen from the age of eight to eighty21.
One of the most awaited transpositions from literary to filmic language is Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, a Netflix animation project to be released at the end of 2022. It seems to be a dark reimaging of the classic children’s fairy tale of the wooden puppet in a stop-motion musical adventure.
The film is directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson and features an all-star voice cast with Ewan McGregor as Cricket, David Bradley as Geppetto, and introducing Gregory Mann as Pinocchio. The rest of the cast includes Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman Christoph Waltz, and Tilda Swinton.
Seen as a metaphor, the Pinocchio by Guillermo Del Toro will be set during the period between the two World Wars, in Italy’s fascist period.
Starting in 2015 with the Cinderella by Kenneth Branagh (Death on the Nile), Disney has embarked on a transposition of its greatest animation successes into live-action. After The Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson, Dumbo by Tim Burton, and the Aladdin performed by Will Smith, it is now the turn of Pinocchio. A serious competitor to the remake of Carlo Collodi’s novel will be that one coming in 2022, a choice under Disney’s strategy to remain faithful to the material of origin, in director Robert Zemeckis’ live-action retelling of the animated Disney classic, with Tom Hanks playing Geppetto. The film will be a Disney + exclusive and will be released in the fall of 2022, without yet an official date. At the moment no images or trailers about the film were released, while the official logo of the film was released, which partly incorporates the original one used in the 1940 cartoon. Currently, it is not clear whether the story will be a re-edition of the cardboard version or if it will be more faithful to Collodi’s book. The full cast of this live-action sees Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo, Luke Evans, and the voices of Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Keegan-Michael Key, and Lorraine Bracco.
Pinocchio has inspired Steven Spielberg in his film ET—the extraterrestrial child who became the most famous puppet in 1980s cinema—and more recently Pinocchio makes a comeback in his film Artificial Intelligence (2001). Francis Ford Coppola also contemplated a feature film on Pinocchio, but never realized it. There was also a project by Federico Fellini for a film on Pinocchio22. Fellini had a predilection for Pinocchio, although he may have viewed the story of the puppet as a nightmare, and the presence of motifs from Collodi’s story in many of his films. In Fellini’s last film the protagonist, played by Benigni, is shown with a Pinocchio puppet.23
Conclusions
Each film version of Collodi’s classic presents a Pinocchio suited for a different socio-cultural scene. Pinocchio is the emblem of fantasizing, it is more than an emblem, it is a symbol, but a symbol is made up of a myriad of possible allegories and all the personifications of fantasizing Pinocchios give reliable results if put to the proper use each allegory, translating the events of the story one by one into morality. In all these versions, adaptations, re-makes, transpositions, more or less faithful to the original text, more or less inventive, original or fascinating, scary or enchanting, one can see the wonderful metamorphosis, turned into a flying fantasy, which paints in our minds sublime visions.24 In all of them, it was about the metaphorical story of life, of becoming little big men, avoiding the daily traps, and putting feelings at the center, it was about what means to be human, about the instinct to live, evolve and be autonomous, which is the leitmotif of the entire story. Collodi’s text continues to generate new and distinctive cinematic versions of a classic that has reached iconic dimensions.
Final Notes
1Elémire Zolla, Carlo Collodi, in: "Uscite dal mondo", Adelphi, 1992 and Postfazione al Pinocchio, Milano, Mondadori, 2021
2Patricia, Merivale, The Telling of Lies and ‘the Sea of Stories’: Haroun, Pinocchio and the Postcolonial Artist Parable, in: "ARIEL," 28, no. 1, January 1997, pp. 193-208.
3https://www.sprezzatura.it/Zolla_Pinocchio.htm
4Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, L’effetto Pinocchio. Italia 1861-1922. La costruzione di una complessa modernità, Elliot
5Jennifer Stone, Pinocchio and Pinocchiology, in ”American Imago”, Vol. 51, No. 3, CHILDREN (FALL 1994), The Johns Hopkins University Press
6https://www.mardeisargassi.it/pinocchio-una-lettura-arche tipica-del-film-di-garrone-e-della-favola-di-collodi/
7One of the main contributions left by Jung is the role that archetypes such as that of Puer play in the individual and collective psyche. In particular with the term Puer, Jung refers to the infantile side contained in each of us, in its dual aspects of vital charge and at the same time an obstacle to growth, as well as the various possibilities of harmony and imbalance that we can achieve.
8The Mentor teaches, protects, and guides the Hero. Just like the Hero, the Mentor represents more of a function than a specific role: a task that over the course of history can be performed by various characters who also embody other Archetypes.
9Often representing evil in cultures, the shadow is considered as the source of a renewal of the personality, through the „confrontation with the shadow”, the first phase of Jungian therapy. What we call defects, in fact, very often derive their origin from the nature of the shadow which is made up of unconscious complexes.
10AAVV, The Wise Old Man: Archetype Anatomy & Relevant Book Recommendations, in „Analytical psychology”, June 15th, 2019, p.1: The wise old man (also called senex, sage or sophos) is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character.
11Kavya Raghavan, Discovering Archetypes: The Sage Archetype, in: "Inner Space", October, 16th, 2015, p. 1
12During his research, Jung notes that "it is typical (...) that the influences exerted by the unconscious on the conscious always have the characteristics of the opposite sex". The specificity of these two archetypes (Animus and Anima, the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind) is that they are projected onto beings from the outside world, their opposition is even found, according to Jung, in the antagonism between nature and spirit which forms the basis of all systems of thought.
13Romana Andò, Silvia Leonzi, Transmedia story telling e audience management. Strategie narrative e pratiche partecipative nell’era digitale, Armando Editore, Roma, 2013
14Zipes, "Towards a Theory", p. 17.
15https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186449/plotsummary
16idem, consulted on the 21st of December 2021
17https://fffmovieposters.com/shop/pinocchio-and-the-emperor -of-the-night-2/ , consulted on the 11th of January, 2022
18https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0905628/plotsummary, consulted on the 6th January 2022
19https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200656/, consulted on the 17th of January 2022
20Patrizia Bettella Collodi’s Puppet in Film: Disney, Comencini, Benigni, in «Quaderni d’italianistica», nr. 1, 2004, pp. 9-27
21idem
22Giusti, Quando Fellini cercava Benigni: "Fellini saw Pinocchio as a nightmare, with a little dislike for this Tuscan nineteenth century, a little bourgeois."
23Patrizia Bettella, Collodi’s Puppet in Film: Disney, Comencini, Benigni, Quaderni d’italianistica, p. 2
24There are, also some other adaptations in the entertainment world (musical): https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=2qqfu91UUqk&ab_channel=pinocchiomusical (Iniziative & Progetti e Starinsieme Edizioni Musicali, con il Patrocinio del Ministero dei Beni Culturali, Ministero dell’Istruzione, Regione Lazio e Provincia di Latina); danza: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkzOjtbYYRo&ab_channel= DANZAILCIGNOSSD; ballet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5S3Of7JU8M&ab_channel=BallettoMediterraneo; theater: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfp27KfaMc&ab_channel=TeatroSocialediMantova
(Teatro Sociale), https://youtu.be/Ny-PcdEFRwY (Gruppo Pantarei)
Bibliography
Collodi, Carlo, Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino/The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet, in "Giornale dei bambini/Children’s Magazine", 1881; Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino/The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet), illustration by E. Mazzanti, Firenze, Tipografia Moder, 1883
Barrier, Michael, Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age, New York, Oxford University Press., 1999, pp. 269–273
Bettella, Patrizia, Collodi’s Puppet in Film: Disney, Comencini, Benigni, in «Quaderni d’italianistica», nr. 1, 2004
Bevilacqua, Alberto. Nino Manfredi: Pinocchio mio figlio, in «Corriere della Sera», 12 March 1978
Calvino, Italo, Ma Collodi non esiste, in «La Repubblica», 19–20 aprile 1981
Ciotta, Mariuccia, Un divino pezzo di legno, in «Il Manifesto», 11 Oct. 2002
Danna, Maria Paola, Il naso di Pinocchio rispunta su Raitre, in «Il Giornale», 8 Sept. 1989
Demers, Patricia, Diventassi anch’io un uomo’: Pinocchio’s shared humanity, in «Quaderni d’italianistica», 25 .1 (2004), pp. 29-42
Giusti, Marco, Quando Fellini cercava Benigni, in «L’Espresso», 24 Aug. 2000
Jacobi, J., Complex, Archetype, Symbol, London (1959) p. 114
Jung, C. G. (1934–1954), The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, vol. 9 (2 ed.), Princeton, NY, Bollingen, 1981
Ernesto, Laura, Pinocchio nel cinema mondiale: una panoramica, in «Pinocchio sullo schermo e sulla scena». Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio del 8-9-10 novembre 1990, ed. Giuseppe Flores d’Arcais. Florence: Fondazione Nazionale “Carlo Collodi”, La Nuova Italia, 1994
Sachse, Nancy. Pinocchio in USA, Pescia: Quaderni della Fondazione Nazionale “Carlo Collodi”, 1981
Stevens, Anthony (2004). Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self. London: Routledge. p. 73
Stevens, Anthony, The Handbook of Jungian Psychology, in “The archetypes” (Chapter 3), Ed. Papadopoulos, Renos, (2006)
Tempesti, Fernando, Chi era il Collodi, com’è fatto Pinocchio, in Collodi, Carlo, Le avventure di Pinocchio, Milano, Garzanti, 1972
Vitali, Alessandra, Torna Pinocchio di Comencini, gioiello della televisione che fu, in «L’Espresso», 24 Dic. 2002
Weiner, Michael O.; Gallo-Silver, Les Paul (2018). The Complete Father: Essential Concepts and Archetypes. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. p. 5
Wunderlich, Richard, Morrisey, Thomas (2002), Pinocchio Goes Postmodern: Perils of a Puppet in the United States, New York: Routledge
Wunderlich, Richard, The Tribulations of Pinocchio: How Social Change Can Wreck a Good Story, in «Poetics Today», 13. 1 (1992), pp. 197-219
Zipes, Jack, Towards a Theory of the Fairy-Tale Film: The Case of Pinocchio, The Lion, and the Unicorn 20 (1996), pp. 1-24
Webgraphy
https://cineuropa.org/film/370321/
https://www.sprezzatura.it/Zolla_Pinocchio.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuhSXeFXv64&ab_channel=AnimeHald
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXdqvBvBwv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNxweeIMcwQ&ab _channel=MOVClips
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186449/plotsummary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDHXo3hifOc&ab_channel=MSDos69
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi312786457?playlistId=tt0081340&ref_=tt_ov_vi
https://fffmovieposters.com/shop/pinocchio-and-the-emperor-of-the-night-2/
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1928397081?playlistId=tt0199950&ref_=tt_ov_vi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdSZWvO7DU4
https://www.thearchive.tv/feature/adventures-pinocchio
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1980565273/?ref_=tt_vi_i_2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-9WCVRqKKU&ab _channel=MovieTrailerLocker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8pmj6RkiQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hau_p3N-MI&ab_channel=Movieclips
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0905628/plotsummary
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200656
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tGxZgQ6moo&ab_channel=Ilovefiction
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1693039/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIY66EHY3vE
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4242112/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8UDuUVwUzg&ab _channel=MovieCoverage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo02mwsWbAI&ab _channel=Netflix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92rzeueoEqI&ab_channel=HeyUGuys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REs5s1R3twM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qqfu91UUqk&ab_channel=pinocchiomusical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkzOjtbYYRo&ab_channel=DANZAILCIGNOSSD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5S3Of7JU 8M&ab_channel=BallettoMediterraneo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfp27KfaMc&ab_channel=TeatroSocialediMantova
Filmography
Pinocchio, 1911, directed by Giulio Antamoro, Italy, Società Italiana Cines
Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1915, Italy, Società Anonima Ambrosio
Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1936, animation film, directed by Umberto Spano and Raoul Verdini, produced by Cartoni Animati Italiani Roma
Zolotoy klyuchik, 1939, Soviet Union, Mosfilm, Director Aleksandr Ptushko
Pinocchio, 1940, USA, Walt Disney Studios directors Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, and Wilfred Jackson. animation film
Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1947, Italy, Production companies Excelsa Film, Fiaba Film, director Gianetto Guardone
Pinocchio, 1954, Brazilian TV Series in Portuguese produced by TV Tupi
Pinocchio, 1957, TV Movie, directed by Paul Bogart, a United States NBC Television Musical, a Black and White Rexall Production
Pinocchios Abenteuer, 1959, color short East German animation, Production company: DEFA-Studio für Trickfilme: Directors of the production are Erich Günther, Carl Schröder
Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1959, TV Mini-Series in 3 episodes, in Black and White, Italy, produced by RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana
Pinocchio, 1965, TV Movie, CBS Television Studio 21 musical, produced by Prince Street Productions, directed by Nick Havinga
Pinocchio in Outer Space, 1965, directed by Ray Goossens, Belgium, United States, production companies: Belvision, Swallow
Pinocchiova dobrodruzství, 1967, Pinocchiova dobrodruzství II (1970), filmed in Czechoslovakia, Director Zdenek Sirový, Czech transposition in a TV Movie
Turlis Abenteuer, 1967, East Germany, Deutsche Film (DEFA) and Omega Productions, directed by Walter Beck and by Ron Merk (the English version)
De avonturen van Pinokkio (1968-1969), TV Series filmed and broadcast in the Netherlands, in Dutch.
Pinocchio, 1968, filmed and released in the USA, color TV Movie, Musical, direction of Sid Smith
Pinocchio, 1971, USA, directed by Corey Allen, Production companies: Pinno Film Company, Lima Productions
Un burattino di nome Pinocchio, 1971, Italian, color animation film, produced by Cartoons Cinematografica Italiana, directed by Giuliano Cenci and Jesse Vogel
Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1972, TV miniseries directed by Luigi Comencini, produced by Cinecittà Studios, in Rome, and broadcast by RAI.
Kashi no ki Mokku, 1972, TV Series, Japan, the United States, and Canada and produced by Tatsunoko Production.
Pinocchio, American musical Danny Kaye, 1976, produced by the American company Vidtronics, directed by Ron Field and Sid Smith
Pikorîo no bôken, 1976, anime TV series,co-production of ZDF and ORF, in Japanese and German Languages, production companies: Apollo Film, Nippon Animation Co., Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen
Priklyucheniya Buratino, 1976, in Russian language, Soviet Union, (remake in 1997), Noveyshie priklyucheniya Buratino, produced by Golden Key Entertainment, directed by Din Mokhamatdinov.
Pinocchio, TV Series of one season, 1978, produced in the United Kingdom and broadcast by BBC
Pinocchio’s Christmas, 1980, TV Movie, musical, produced in the USA by the company Rankin/Bass Productions, directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.
The Stowaway, 1981, produced in the USA by NBC Television Stations and by Unicorn Tales Inc., directed by Nick De Noia.
Pinocchio, TV Movie, filmed at Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis, USA, directed by John Clark Donahue and John Driver was released in 1982.
Faerie Tale Theatre: Pinocchio, 1984, TV series, filmed in the USA on the locations of ABC Television Center in Los Angeles, produced by the companies Production Gaylord Productions, LionGate Films, Platypus Productions, directed by Peter Medak.
The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1984, produced by Century Video Corporation, American Way, Harmony Gold, directed by Ippei Kuri and Jim Terry
Pinokio, 1985, video, Greece, directed by Giannis Vranas
Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, 1987, American adaptation, directed by Hal Sutherland, produced by Filmation Associates
Pinocchio, 1992, animation, originally released by Trimark Pictures and subsequently by Golden Films and Goodtimes Entertainment companies
OcchioPinocchio, 1994, filmed in Houston and Cinecittà Studio, and produced by Penta Distribuzione and Filmone Production companies
My Very First Pinocchio Story Book, 1995, video, USA, directed by Douglas K. Ingber, produced by Video Kids Inc., Ingber Television and Video Associates Production companies
Pinocchio, 1996, video game, Disney Interactive, NMS Software, and Virgin Interactive Entertainment, directed by Dan Marchant
The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1996, filmed in Croatia, directed by Steve Barron and produced by New Line Cinema, Savoy Pictures, Twin Continental Films
The New Adventures of Pinocchio, 1999, directed by Michael Anderson, filmed in Luxembourg (Carousel Picture Company) and produced by Centurion Fries Film Group Creative Berlin Filmpartners
Pinocchio and the Golden Key, 1998, animation TV Episode, directed by Dmitriy Babichenko and produced by the companies Films by Jove, Jove Pictures, and Soyuzmultfilm
Pinocchio ovvero lo spettacolo della provvidenza, 1999, Italian, movie, produced by the Rai 2, Nostra Signora and by the Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma
Geppetto, 2000, TV Disney Episode, filmed in Los Angeles, produced by James Pentecost Productions, Karz Entertainment, and Walt Disney Television
Pinocchio, 2002, Italian, directed by Roberto Benigni’s vision of Pinocchio, filming locations performed by Mediterranean Film Studios in Kalkara, Malta. The production companies; Melampo Cinematografica Cecchi Gori Group Fin.Ma.Vi.
Pinocchio, 2009, Italian-British television miniseries (two episodes), produced by Rai Fiction, Lux Vide, and the English production company Power, directed by Alberto Sironi, filmed in Tuscany
Pinocchio, 2012, directed by Enzo D’Alò, producted by Lionsgate. The production companies: 2d3D Animations, Cometa Film and Iris Group
Pinocchio in LIS, 2013, Italian Video, Dipartimento di studi Linguistici e Culturali comparati, Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia
Pinocchio, 2015, Czech directed by Stepán Gajdos
Pinocchio, 2019, directed by Matteo Garrone, produced by Archimede with Rai Cinema and Le Pacte, in association with Recorded Picture Company.
Pinocchio, 2022, USA, directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, Netflix animation project, to be released
Pinocchio, 2022, USA, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Disney, to be released