Pinocchio's Adventures


The story and playful spirits of Pinocchio boast over a hundred years of life. This character, at once a child and a puppet, endowed with the aura of fascination inherent in matter that has mysteriously come alive, has proved an abiding companion of many decades and has spanned geographic and cultural divides, migrating from one form of expression to another without losing the specificity that makes him recognizable and lovable in the eyes of children and ex children alike throughout the world. His enduring power of fascination is testified by the experience and cultural heritage built up in over forty years by the National "Carlo Collodi" Foundation, which was set up to promote knowledge of the work of Carlo Lorenzini/Collodi.
July 7th. 1981 saw the publication of the first instalment of The Story of a Puppet by Carolo Collodi, which appeared in the "Children's Magazine", one of the first Italian weeklies for children. The story broke off abruptly several months later at Chapter XVI, leaving Pinocchio dangling from a branch of the Great Oak, possibly hanged and dying. But such was the outcry from the readers that the instalments resumed on 16th. February 1882, under the title Pinocchio's Adventures, which took the story right up to its final ending, published in January 1883. Immediately after the publication of the last instalment, Pinocchio's Adventures came out as a complete book, in February of that year. By 1890, the year of Carlo Collodi's death, it had reached the fifth edition.

From that moment on, the ever-increasing popularity of Pinocchio on what were at that time the main markets for children's books, and subsequently on the world-wide market as well, has made it an enduring classic. In 1891 it came out in Great Britain, with illustrations by Mazzanti, and was given an enthusiastic write-up - by no means an insignificant accomplishment in the homeland of children's books. Its first appearance in the USA dates from 1898, but it was not until 1904 that the first United States edition genuinely translated and ilustrated by Americans was published, thanks to the work of Walter S. Cramp and Charles Copeland. Ever since then - since long before the huge international success of of Walt Disney's Pinocchio - the puppet's adventures have represented one of America's best-loved children's stories, and also one that has always been a landmark achievement for many illustrators.
Together, the American and British editions would subsequently contribute to popularizing Pinocchio even in countries whose cultures differed strikingly from the Italian model, such as Iceland or numerous Asian countries. In 1905 the story was published in Germany, as a result of the efforts of Otto Julius Bierbaum, who reworked the Adventures into a story called Zapfelkerns Abenteuer ("Pine Nut's Adventures"). Meanwhile, the first French edition had been published in 1902. Between 1911 and the Second World War, Collodi's book was translated into all the European languages and a also number of the languages of Asia, Africa and Oceania.
Pinocchio has been eagerly scooped up by all those who are involved in new means of communication :
for not only does it provide a creative stimulus, but the success of the character and his story also provide strong support for innovative forms of expression with which the public needs to gain familiarity.
Thus after having inaugurated a new type of children's book (new mainly by virtue of the fascination it held over its readers) Pinocchio was adopted by one of the pioneers of cinema, Count Giulio Cesare Antamoro, who screened it in 1911 in a hand-coloured silent film lasting no less than 30 minutes .
The main character was played by the then celebrated entertainer Polydor, and the filmstrip has recently been rediscovered in an almost intact version, which has been lovingly restored. In 1932 Pinocchio became the protagonist of a film produced in Japan using an experimental technique of animated puppets (the film director was Noburo Ofuji), while in Italy a number of experiments were carried out in the 1930s with full-length films using animated cartoons, partly in colour, all of which were based on the story of the puppet Pinocchio. The 1940 Walt Disney version also provided an opportunity to experiment with new techniques of animated film. During the same period, a number of versions featuring both animated cartoons and puppets were produced in the Soviet Union, based on Aleksej N. Tolstoj's re-elaboration of Pinocchio, called The Little Golden Key. Overall, 17 cinematic versions of the story of Pinocchio have been produced, as well as several citations (including the famed "Totò a colori" ("Totò in colour").
Among the most recent film ventures, one may note two that feature character actors : an English production directed by Steve Barron, released in late 1996, and a project still in progress directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Furthermore, a survey of the present scene reveals intense utilization of Pinocchio in the guise of protagonist and "booster" for multimedial products that are being launched into circulation.
These cover the entire range from a simple reproduction of the story of Pinocchio on floppy disk to complex multilingual creations with graphic animation options or hypertext hot spots allowing the reader/viewer to jump from one storyline to another, according to preferences.
The possibility of choosing among various languages not only favours sale of the product on the global market but also fulfils an important educational function :
for it enables children, who are reassured by a degree of familiarity with the story and find it entertaining to approach it in a new form, to make their first steps towards contact with a second language much more easily. Examples of these innovative creations include the CD-TV of Giunti Multimedia, containing the story in six different European languages, and video games based on the original illustrations drawn by Leonardo Mattioli for an edition of Pinocchio's Adventures. Published by Vallecchi in 1955, the original illustrated edition was commissioned by the Committee for the Monument to Pinocchio, which was later to become the Carlo Collodi National Foundation.