"Once upon a time, there was ... 'A king!' my little readers will say right away. No, children, you are wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood...."

Pinocchio (Le Avventure di Pinocchio) is a children's tale by Carlo Collodi published in serial form in1880 and in book form in 1883 in Italy, which has come to be a classic: it has been filmed over twenty times. Notable film versions include Walt Disney's full-length animated feature Pinocchio (1940); The Adventures of Pinocchio, (1972) a film by Luigi Comencini , and a less successful live-action film in 2002 directed by and starring Roberto Benigni.

Collodi had not originally intended the work as purely a children's story: in the original version Pinocchio dies, hanged for his innumerable faults, and only in the later versions would the story be converted to the famous ending with the marionette transforming into a child. Many reviewers conclude that Pinocchio, rather than a children's tale, is a critique of a familiar form, the novel of education , an allegory of contemporary society, a look at the contrast between respectability and free instinct in a very severe, formal time. Behind the optimistic pedagogical appearance, the romance is a sad irony, and sometimes a satire, on that formal pedagogy and, through this, against the nonsense of these social manners in general. In style the story was new and modern, opening the way to many writers of the following century. Its Italian language is peppered with Florentinisms. Several of the book's concepts have become commonplace, particularly the proverbial long nose for liars.

Pinocchio had an immediate success, but in upper class families it was not initially regarded as suitable for "well-educated" children.

Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi wrote a famous Russian adaptation of the book, entitled The Adventures of Burratino (burattino is Italian for "puppet").

The Disney's homonymous animated film (first released on February 7, 1940), although a free interpretation of the Collodi's story, is considered a masterpiece of the art of animation and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eyes"; pino (pine) + occhio (eye).

Steven Spielberg's film, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), based on a Stanley Kubrick project that was cut short by Kubrick's death, recasts the Pinocchio theme, in which an android with emotions longs to become a real boy.

See also

• Jiminy Cricket
• Blue Fairy

External links

• (translated from Italian by Carol Della Chiesa)
• "The Persistent Puppet: Pinocchio's heirs in contemporary fiction and film"