The film OcchioPinocchio, directed and starring Francesco Nuti (whose death anniversary was only a few days ago) was released in cinemas in 1994. Considered among the darkest and most forgotten films of the Tuscan director, it is, however, the one that best suits to take on a symbolic dimension. This work marks, in fact, the conclusion, or one of the possible conclusions, of that extremely peculiar phenomenon which characterized Italian cinema between the end of the ’70s and the very beginning of the ’90s – and which, here, we could define, shortly, tragicomedy: a comedy, that is, which reveals, at the bottom of its ironic trait, the characteristics of the melancholic, of chiaroscuro, of the impossibility of arriving at a decisive End. A cinematic season capable of telling us, artistically, that final part of the decline of a Kultur (Italian but, more generally, European) whose roots can already be seen at the end of the ’60s.
Of this comedy of the sunset, of the search for scraps, Francesco Nuti is the artist, today, more on the margins and OcchioPinocchio constitutes, of this future oblivion, a fundamental stage: it is, in fact, the work that marks the conclusion of his creative period – a film cursed, not fully lucid, very difficult to produce, as well as having little success, both critically and commercially. The end of Nuti the artist thus coincides with one of the possible conclusions of that Italian tragicomedy, the end of which, in turn, reminds us of the twilight of that art of sunset and the consequent introduction into a new Culture – which we still inhabit today – now looking for new and different artistic forms. It is precisely, however, by virtue of these reasons that OcchioPinocchio should be revisited: in this waste film we find, in fact, the symbolism of an end, both artistic and historical, which we should, perhaps, reinterpret, to better understand the desert condition of the our current form of life.
We should, then, ask ourselves: can Occhiopinocchio really be considered a failure? Which version of Pinocchio does Francesco Nuti want to give us back, which possible re-actualisation – which relationship, that is, does he establish between this fable eternal and contemporary society? Among the works of the Tuscan director, it is certainly the most ambitious: one can, in fact, also read it as the search for that complete recognition which, at a certain depth – a problem which will also be shared by other protagonists of this cinematographic season – can be seen as constantly missed. And, however, this will be precisely the film in which Nuti will be least recognized – precisely in the film, that is, in which he attempts that leap, without renouncing the characteristic traits of his tragicomic foundation.
In any case, OcchioPinocchio, although a film that symbolizes Nuti’s artistic incompleteness, should still be reread today for many reasons – both artistic strictu sensu both for the possibility of understanding some very important historical passages: for the fact, therefore, that it represents, plastically, an art of the sunset which is, in turn, sunsetting, but also, and above all, because this work is capable of come into conflict, even today, with our contemporaneity. In fact, the tale of Pinocchio is brought up to date with the aim of criticizing what is defined civilized world – on the trail of that beautiful album by Edoardo Bennato, released in 1977, entitled, precisely, Wireless puppet. No longer, therefore, a Pinocchio in training, who must progress, becoming civilized, to finally enter the mechanisms of Society, but rather a heretical, deviant Pinocchio, who precisely by virtue of this structural anomaly is able to reveal the cracks, the waste, the marginalities produced, continuously, by a world only apparently in harmony.
A barbaric Pinocchio radically alternative to that world of high finance in which he finds himself having to live: alienated from Civilization, unable to understand its rules and codes, he thus longs to escape – go beyond the confine – in the direction of a different world, and a different form of life. Far from being a Bildungsroman aimed towards a final integration, here the movement is the opposite, illustrating, rather, the dark side of that world formally in order – showing, that is, those wastes that do not integrate, and make everything to avoid integrating. A representation which, however, seems unable to go beyond the impossibility of integration – the horizon of struggle seems, in fact, impossible within a monolithic society which increasingly takes on the character ofirredeemable. Nuti’s Pinocchio is thus an a priori defeat – a representation of a marginality definitively banished by a society that is increasingly difficult to face, and which struggles, despite its efforts, to retain something of that culture in the twilight: even theancientfaced with the new that is advancing, seems to enunciate words that are impossible to understand due to the surrounding context.
Thus, what now seems to remain, also as a future possibility of redemption, is the dimension of the story: describing stories of marginality, without immediate redemption, in the hope that someone or something, in a different future, can put them back together – saving them, in this way, from oblivion – waste and ruins. It is for these reasons that one of the keys to the film is in the description of that relationship, gradually more and more intimate and emotional, between that deviant Pinocchio and Lucy (female representation of Lucifer), a criminal on the run from the police. As for Pinocchio, so also for Lucy, the distance from Civilization represents, however, the possibility of preserving something – if nothing else the thought of another way – at least from an existential perspective: Lucy, in fact, despite her dimension of guilt , despite her cyclical atrocities, is the one capable of maintaining a passion for marginality – of being affected by a sincere pity for that Pinocchio who never grew up, to the point of risking her own existence in order to save him from certain death. Thus, in this case too, the conventional narrative of the fairy tale is overturned: Pinocchio and Lucy, both without the possibility of immediate redemption, actually retain, in their marginality, the possibility of a future utopia, of a world antithetical to Civilization dominant. And, however, in the present – in a society in which the voice of marginality is increasingly reduced – what remains seems to be only the possibility of describing anthropologies and existences, heretical and residual, but increasingly resigned, that is, difficult to convert into subversive potential, or revolutionary space.
