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naivesilver · 3 years

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Two ends of a string: Pinocchio connections masterpost

So. As some of you may know, this year a Pinocchio movie was nominated at the Academy Awards, both for its costumes and for the extensive make-up required to turn some of its characters into their magical selves.

While the movie didn’t win a single Oscar, as well as receiving mixed reactions from that side of the audience less accustomed to the cruder, closer-to-book-canon approach the story took, I myself liked it quite a lot. However, what really got me thinking long before I ever sat down to watch it was its choice of actors, as for the role of Geppetto the director had cast Roberto Benigni - a man who nearly twenty years ago at this point portrayed Pinocchio himself, in a somewhat controversial adaptation of his own.

I ruminated on it for a while, then set out to discover how many (if any) of this kind of coincidences had already happened during the long history of the Pinocchio franchise. And boy, did I find a goldmine of information, not to mention a handful of people who’d posed themselves the same question.

What ended up being collected in this post might not even be the entirety of the answer, both because of plausible faults in the researcher’s work (AKA my slight obsession about the matter and subsequent lack of professionality) and for lack of data, especially when it came to older movies (or, in the case of Steve Barron’s 1996 movie, a strong refusal by most Italian Wikipedia pages to acknowledge the existence of an Italian dub of the very same movie), but it does cover a pretty big chunk of those movies and shows that most Pinocchio fans would at least know of at this point. Hopefully, it will be enough to satisfy your curiosity.

Well, what do y’all say? Want to take a dip into what one of my friends affectionately dubbed The Pinocchioverse? Then come along!

A couple disclaimers before we begin:

this is a long list. Like, massive. I apologize to those who expected me to be a sensible person for once in my life. I analyzed something between 20 and 30 of the main adaptations for this, and despite “only” 16 of them yielding results, it’s still a huge load of stuff to process

visuals were added where possible, but some of them are missing because of lack of HQ/even-just-passableQ stills and/or because the picture would have shown another person, in the case of a live-action dub

most of the names here are Italian, though certainly not because of some misguided attempt at patriotism. Apparently my native country simply loves its mischievous puppets a lot and I can’t exactly fault anyone for that tbh. Some of them physically appeared in multiple local adaptations, but many more devoted themselves to voice acting, or participated in an even mixture of media. A few even went abroad to play a part in another country’s Pinocchio movie, which is what I would call dedication if I weren’t trying to make a serious point

Here we go, then. Seatbelts on!

Roberto Benigni: Pinocchio (2002 movie), Geppetto (2019 movie)

Rocco Papaleo: Cat (2019 movie), Mangiafoco/Fire-Eater (2012 animated movie)

Massimo Ceccherini: Fox (2019 movie), Lucio/Lampwick (Lucignolo, “modern Pinocchio retelling”), unknown character (2009 live theater shows)

Sergio Forconi: clinic patient (Lucignolo), Cecconi (2019 movie)

Lucrezia Marricchi: Cynthia (Pinocchio 3000, Italian dub), Turchina/Fairy (2012 animated movie)

Carlo Valli: Geppetto (La notte di Pinocchio, live theater show), Cricket (2012 animated movie)

Corrado Conforti: Pinocchio (Shrek, Italian dub), Parrot (2012 animated movie)

Paolo Marchese: Jailer (2012 animated movie), Mangiafoco/Fire-Eater (2019 movie, English dub)

Giorgio Lopez: Scamboli (Pinocchio 3000, Italian dub), Alidoro (2012 animated movie)

Luca Dal Fabbro: Fisherman (2012 animated movie), Cricket/Pantalone/Mastiff (2019 movie, English dub)

Emanuela Rossi: Fairy (Bentornato Pinocchio), Dove (2012 animated movie)

Riccardo Billi: Coachman+Master Cherry Italian dub (1972 miniseries), unknown character (1947 movie)

Mario Adorf: Circus Ringleader (1972 miniseries), Geppetto (2013 miniseries)

Teco Celio: Gorilla Judge (2019 movie), Lorenzini’s Henchman (1996 movie)

Mino Caprio: Geppetto (2012 animated movie), Geppetto (Bentornato Pinocchio)

Oliviero Dinelli: Fox (Bentornato Pinocchio), Remigio (2019 movie, English dub)

Luigi Ferraro: Robot (Bentornato Pinocchio), Raven/Circus Ringleader/Mastiff (2019 movie, English dub)

Lauro Gazzolo: Cricket (1971 animated movie), Geppetto (1947 movie, Italian dub)

(For some reason, a good chunk of the original actors in the 1947 movie were dubbed over by famous voice actors of the time. This was apparently the standard practice for many productions of the era, so this instance would have gone unnoticed if not one but four of those VAs hadn’t already given their voice to characters in the Disney movie a few years earlier. Specifically, we’re talking about:

Lydia Simoneschi: Fairy (1947), Fairy (Disney)

Cesare Polacco: Judge (1947), Coachman (Disney)

Carlo Romano: Caporale (1947), Jiminy Cricket (Disney)

Mario Besesti: Narrator (1947), Stromboli (Disney)

It’s worth mentioning that while the three men in this list have largely been forgotten by now, Lydia Simoneschi lent her voice to eight different Disney classics, and as such is remembered affectionately by anyone still listening to those movies’ Italian OST like me, who recognized her name on sight as soon as I scrolled down the cast list.)

Additional tidbits of information:

the movies with the highest number of connections are the 2012 and 2019 ones, with 9 cast members each - most adaptations only had 1 or 2, with a small peak of 4 in the case of Bentornato Pinocchio

Massimo Ceccherini holds the record for having taken part in the most adaptations, with 3, while there are only two cases of people going on to reprise the same role they first held, Lydia Simoneschi with the Fairy and Mino Caprio with Geppetto

incidentally, in one of Caprio’s movies (the 2012 cartoon, specifically) it was his son Gabriele who voiced Pinocchio; the only other familial connection I managed to dig out, albeit far more distant and arguably not as sweet, is the one between Vittorio Gassman (the Green Fisherman in the 1947 movie) and his son Alessandro (Collodi in the 2009 miniseries)

one of the farmers in the 1972 miniseries was played by someone called Mario Ercolani. The man isn’t credited in any other movie to date, which is somewhat understandable...considering that at the time he was holding a prominent position in the Banca d’Italia, and later became the bank’s General Director. Yes, you’ve read that correctly: the Banca d’Italia, AKA the central bank of the Italian Republic, tasked with keeping the stability and efficiency of the country’s economy in check. Ercolani’s successor was none other than Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who went on to sit as President of the Republic for all of seven years. I am relying all of this in the hope that someone not as in shock as me might explain to me why this man was out and about wearing clogs and cursing at a small child on screen instead of, I don’t know, swimming in money like Uncle Scrooge

before getting down to seriously work on this, I would often joke that when you’re an Italian actor, either you’ve done Pinocchio or you’ve done Inspector Montalbano (police/detective tv show, famous all over the country, my beloved); after making this list, I can now say with some degree of certainty that when you’re an Italian actor, you’ve most likely done both. While many of the actors and actresses listed here didn’t get a spot in the show, either because they were “big names” or primarily voice actors, I can confidently assure you that there are dozens of people who only starred in a singular Pinocchio adaptation and in at least an episode of Inspector Montalbano (and anyway, all these guys up here? Most of them were in Don Matteo. Which, if you ask any of your Italian friends, is pretty much the same thing )

in fact, Inspector Montalbano’s books’ very author, Andrea Camilleri, wrote a delightful screenplay with his friend Ugo Gregoretti called Pinocchio (Mal) Visto Dal Gatto E La Volpe (Pinocchio Seen (With Disdain) By The Cat And The Fox) and even played it on stage, taking on the role of the Fox. You can watch a trailer for it here (unfortunately, the full show was taken off RaiPlay a while ago and can’t be found anywhere else. I’ll keep an eye out, though)

This should be it???? I fear I might have forgotten something, but then again at this point I have pages upon pages filled with notes about this topic (not to mention the dozens of audio messages I sent to those of my friends who for some reasons haven’t blocked me yet). If anyone knows of details I missed, hit me up! I’ll most likely have to update the post at some point in the future anyway, what with all the new adaptations coming out in the next couple years.

Goodbye. I will now go to sleep and hopefully stop thinking about puppets and related shenanigans.

#pinocchio #I started making this post with the best intentions #but I'm a fool so obviously I started making jokes midway through #even earlier than that tbh #lydia simoneschi literally sent the kill bill sirens blaring in my head #I was like '!!!!! I KNOW THIS WOMAN!!!!!'#if there are typos don't tell me I am illiterate as a trade #(jk. obviously tell me. thank you in advance. BUT STILL)#pinocchio connections

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