The Adventures of Pinocchio - Adaptations

Adaptations

The story has been adapted into many forms on stage and screen, some keeping close to the original Collodi narrative while others treat the story more freely. There are at least fourteen English-language films based on the story (see also:The Adventures of Pinocchio), not to mention the Italian, French, Russian, German, Japanese, and many other versions for the big screen and for television, and several musical adaptations.

• Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote a famous Russian adaptation of the book, entitled The Little Gold Key or the Adventures of Buratino (1936) illustrated by Alexander Koshkin, translated from Russian by Kathleen Cook-Horujy, Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1990, 171 pages, SBN 5-05-002843-4 (burattino is Italian for "puppet"). Leonid Vladimirski later wrote and illustrated a sequel, Buratino in the Emerald City, bringing Buratino to the Magic Land that Alexander Melentyevich Volkov based on the Land of Oz, and which Vladimirski had illustrated.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio (1936), a historically-notable, unfinished Italian animated feature film.
• The Disney animated film Pinocchio (released February 7, 1940). It loosely follows Collodi's story and is considered a masterpiece of the art of animation. It was deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
• Pinocchio, a 1957 TV musical broadcast live during the Golden Age of Television, directed and choreographed by Hanya Holm, and starring such actors as Mickey Rooney (in the title role), Walter Slezak (as Geppetto), Fran Allison (as the Blue Fairy), and Martyn Green (as the Fox). This version featured songs by Alec Wilder and was shown on NBC. It was part of a then-popular trend of musicalizing fantasy stories for television, following the immense success of the Mary Martin Peter Pan, which made its TV debut in 1955.
• The New Adventures of Pinocchio A series of 5 minute stop-motion animated vignettes by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.
• Turlis Abenteuer an East German version released in 1967. In 1969 it was dubbed into English and shown in the US as Pinocchio.
• Pinocchio (1968), a musical version of the story that aired in the United States on NBC, with pop star Peter Noone playing the puppet. This one bore no resemblance to the 1957 television version.
• Un burattino di nome Pinocchio (1972) (The Adventures of Pinocchio for the English/American version aka Las Fantasias de Pinocho for Spanish version), directed from the great master of Italian Animation Giuliano Cenci. The Giuliano Cenci’s Pinocchio, the Classic of the Italian Animation of the XX Century, of extraordinary technical and artistic quality in "full animation", has been doubled from the greatest Italian actors of the age directed from Lauro Gazzolo, with the advising of the Collodi grandsons, Mario and Antonio Lorenzini, and the participation like narrator of Renato Rascel.
• Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972), an exceptional high-quality TV mini-series by Italian director Luigi Comencini, starring Andrea Balestri as Pinocchio, Nino Manfredi as Geppetto and Gina Lollobrigida as the Fairy.
• Pinocchio (1976), still another live-action musical version for television, with Sandy Duncan in a trouser role as the puppet, Danny Kaye as Geppetto, and Flip Wilson as the Fox. It was telecast on CBS, and is available on DVD.
• A 1984 episode of Faerie Tale Theatre starring Paul Reubens as the puppet.
• Golden Films's Pinocchio, released in 1993 and produced by Diane Eskenazi.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), a film by Steve Barron starring Martin Landau as Geppetto and Johnathan Taylor Thomas as Pinocchio
• Geppetto (2000), a television film broadcast on The Wonderful World of Disney starring Drew Carey in the title role, Seth Adkins as Pinocchio, Brent Spiner as Stromboli, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the Blue Fairy.
• Pinocchio (2002), a live-action film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni.
• An opera, The Adventures of Pinocchio, composed by Jonathan Dove to a libretto by Alasdair Middleton, was commissioned by Opera North and premièred at the Grand Theatre in Leeds, England, on 21 December 2007.