The old wood carver Geppetto and his exuberant, slender-nosed puppet, Pinocchio – characters taken from an 1883 Italian children’s novel and popularized by Disney – thus find themselves propelled into Mussolini’s Italy, made up of military salutes, strict conformity and violent machismo.
I wanted to set the film in a period where behaving like a puppet was a good thingexplained Guillermo del Toro last month, on the sidelines of the film festival of the American Film Institute, in Los Angeles.
I wanted Pinocchio to disobeyadded the Mexican director. That Pinocchio, who is the only puppet, does not act like a puppet.
I thought that given the theme, it was perfect.
Allusions to Francoism in his work
If the fabric of fascism seems particularly adapted to the current global political context, it was just as relevant when he conceived the project, several years ago, according to what Guillermo del Toro pointed out.
It worries me, because it’s something humanity seems to be coming back to.continued the filmmaker, who has already dealt with the issue of fascism in his previous Gothic works, The Devil’s Spine (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), which take place in Franco’s Spain.
fascism is always present in the background, or in the foregroundsays Mr. del Toro.
The director tried to sell his interpretation of Pinocchio to Hollywood studios and producers for years, before Netflix finally bought the rights in 2018.
I fought to do [ce film] for half of my careerhe launched.
Avoid Computer Imaging
The feature film, which uses the stop-motion animation process (stop-motion), took more than 1,000 days of filming.
Known for its difficulty, stop-motion animation is one of the oldest techniques in cinema. It consists of taking successive photos of inanimate objects to give them the illusion of movement.
For Guillermo del Toro, the use of computer-generated imagery, as seen in new live-action versions of Disney animated classics, was never an option.
It was very smart, in my opinion, to stage a story about a puppet with puppets, and that the puppets think that they are not puppetsdetailed Mr. del Toro.
It’s kind of a very beautiful kaleidoscopic telescoping.
If the filmmaker, Oscar winner for his fantastic film The shape of water in 2018, has always been fascinated by animation, this is his first such achievement.
In North America, animation is seen a bit more as a genre for kidsnoted Guillermo del Toro.
One of the things that I think everyone is trying to change, not just us, is to say, “Animation is a movie. Animation is playing the comedy. Animation is art”he insisted.
The animation in volume allows to explore particularly touching and deeply spiritual thingsbut it is a technique that is always on the verge of disappearingnoted Mr. del Toro. There are only mad fanatics to bind to keep her alive.
In memory of his mother
Whether Pinocchio is interested in the relationship between a father and his son, Guillermo del Toro became fascinated by the mischievous wooden puppet as a child thanks to his mother, to whom he was extremely close.
I collected things related to Pinocchio… My mother and I saw it together when I was very young and she continued to give me Pinocchio all my lifehe remembered.
Her mother died last month, a day before the film’s international premiere in London.
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