Guillermo del Toro’s animated Pinocchio is set for release today, Friday, December 9, on Netflix. Unlike most versions, which take place in an unspecified time in the 1800s, del Toro confirmed that this version will take place in 1930s Italy under the rule of Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party. Del Toro also revealed that the film is more politically focused than family friendly and blends both Pinocchio and Frankenstein stories.
In del Toro’s Pinocchio, Geppetto’s deceased son is revealed to be named Carlo. This is most likely an homage to Carlo Collodi, who wrote the original Pinocchio story.
Here is more about Collodi:
Carlo Collodi’s, 1826 –1890, (Italian: [kolˈlɔːdi]) real name was Carlo Lorenzini He was born in Florence, his mother, a seamstress from Collodi (the town from which he later took the pen name), and his father, a cook. After attending primary school, his mother’s employers financed theological seminary but Collodi realized he did not want to be a priest and continued his education in Florence, where he studied philosophy and rhetoric, after which he started working at Libera Piatti, a leading Florentine bookstore and small press. To keep up with his growing gambling debts, he wrote a series of elementary school textbooks on commission.
Collodi served as a volunteer with the Tuscan army. You can see his interest in politics developing in his earliest writing as well as in his founding of the satirical newspaper, Lampione, later censored by order of the grand duke of Tuscany. At age 34, he published his first notable work called Il signor Alberi ha ragione! (Mr. Alberi Is Right!) which outlined his political and cultural vision of Italy, but Collodi became disenchanted with Italian politics and turned to children’s literature, his first works involving translating French fairy tales into Italian.
Collodi was fascinated by the idea of using a likable, rascally character as a means of expressing his own views through allegory.
In 1880, age 53, he began writing Storia di un burattino (Story of a Marionette), also called Le avventure di Pinocchio, published weekly. Trying to end the series, he left the puppet hanging on a tree with “finale” printed at the end. Pinocchio’s last words, echoing the words of Christ dying, were: “Oh, Father, dear Father! If you were only here!” After a tempest of protest, Collodi was forced to bring his protagonist back to life, so Pinocchio is cut down from his cross and rescued by the Fairy. Due to poor copyright protection, Collodi never profited much from his creation.
Pinocchio was adapted into the Disney masterpiece in 1940.
After a life of drinking and gambling, Collodi returned to Florence to live with his brother’s family and his mother, “to be re-educated, in order to go back to that good child he once was.” Collodi died suddenly in Florence at the age of 63. At the time he was working on a sequel to the Adventures of Pinocchio.
