OcchioPinocchio

The apocryphal – and cursed – Pinocchio by Francesco Nuti

Abstract

Almost unanimously panned by critics of its time, Francesco Nuti's OcchioPinocchio (1994) is a rare case of a cursed Italian film from the '90s. It made headlines not only for its excessively expensive and troubled production, which resulted in a one-year delay in its release at the time, but also for the subsequent flop, so severe that it marked the decline in Nuti's career and personal life. Twenty years after its release, it might be time to reevaluate its value, if not within a critical discourse, at least by scientifically identifying the prominent place it holds among the cinematic adaptations of Collodi's Pinocchio. Nuti's true epic is, in fact, not only within Italy but in the international Pinocchio universe, a generator of an apocryphal Pinocchio: an adult who remains somewhat childlike due to life's vicissitudes, the son of a "Geppetto" who wishes to turn him into a puppet, forced to flee through the wild and inhospitable America, in love with a darker version of the fairy to whom he ultimately offers help. A disoriented Pinocchio - in the film called "retarded," "idiot," "cretin" - made of flesh that he must learn to understand, eventually timidly discovering his sexuality, incapable of lying and thus ill-suited for a world of deceitful adults (starting with his father); a Pinocchio thrust brutally into a world of violence, where he must fend for himself (no critic has paused to consider the quick and essential scene in which he crushes an insect with his shoe, uttering a "Fuck off cricket [Vaffanculo grillo]," thus confirming his loneliness). "OcchioPinocchio," therefore, shuffles several cards in the Collodian discourse, both diegetically (up to the bad ending) and concerning the physical and psychological construction of the character, who is catapulted from Tuscany to the United States and embodies a specific form of Italianity. The aim of this essay is to provide a historically contextualized and analytical reading of the film.