Synopsis
The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1972) is a landmark Italian fantasy-drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Luigi Comencini adapted Carlo Collodi's original novel for an Italian-French-German co-production, with Nino Manfredi as the lonely woodcarver Geppetto and Gina Lollobrigida as the Blue Fairy — a cast that gives the material real weight.
Geppetto carves a puppet from a talking piece of wood, and Pinocchio — played by child actor Andrea Balestri — springs to life with no instinct for obedience. He wants to become a real boy but keeps getting sidetracked: a pair of swindlers drag him to a pleasure island, he ends up in a circus, gets swallowed by a shark, and lies so often his nose becomes a problem. Vittorio De Sica appears in a supporting role.
What sets Comencini's version apart from the Disney template is its closeness to Collodi's darker source material — there's real punishment here, real loneliness, and real tenderness between the puppet and the old man. Watch The Adventures of Pinocchio online on iFILM.
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