A large-scale Pinocchio hovers over a MoMA hallway (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: CRAFTING PINOCCHIO
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
The Debra and Leon Black Family Film Center
The Paul J. Sachs Galleries
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through April 15, $14-$25 (sixteen and under free)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
crafting pinocchio slideshow
You don’t have to have seen Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning stop-motion-animated Pinocchio or even liked it in order to appreciate the magical “Crafting Pinocchio” exhibition at MoMA, on view for just a few more days. Expect long lines to check out models, maquettes, drawings, dioramas, and video that goes behind the scenes of the making of the film, which started out as a chapter book illustrated by Gris Grimly.
“After the book was published, me and some friends started to develop how this could be a movie. And we came up with a list of directors, and Guillermo was top on the list,” Grimly explains on the audioguide. “Shortly after that, I got a call from a gallery that was selling my artwork, and they said that Guillermo came in and bought a piece of my Pinocchio artwork. And I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ They called him up and we had lunch. And this was 2004, I think. It’s been a long time coming. This has been like twenty some years.”
Doctors examine Pinocchio in scene from Oscar-winning film (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The exhibit is an enticing collection that will bring out the little kid in you. You’ll learn about the creation of such characters as Cricket (voiced by Ewan McGregor), Geppetto (David Bradley), Pinocchio (Gregory Mann), Podesta (Ron Perlman), Dottore (John Turturro), Candlewick (Finn Wolfhard), Spazzatura (Cate Blanchett), the Black Rabbits (Tim Blake Nelson), Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), the Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton), and Mussolini (Tom Kenny) and encounter scenes set in Geppetto’s home, the doctor’s office, the battlefield, and the circus where Pinocchio performs.
“This is a fable very close to my heart, and one that I think has lived in many incarnations,” del Toro says on the guide. “And I trust the one we’re offering to you is a particularly beautiful one. This is a tale about becoming who you are, not transforming yourself for others, which goes counter to the traditional take on Pinocchio.” The film itself will be screened at MoMA on April 14 and 15 at 3:00.
Exhibit goes behind the scenes of the making of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
In the film center downstairs are a number of old copies of Carlo Collodi’s story in multiple languages from around the world, an inside look at the music in del Toro’s movie, and clips and posters from Pinocchio and such other del Toro works as Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and The Devil’s Backbone.
On the audioguide, del Toro adds, “We wanted to create a story about a world that behaves like a puppet and obeys everything they’re told, and a puppet that chooses to be disobedient and finds his own morality, his own soul, and his own humanity by that disobedience.” The MoMA show captures just how del Toro accomplished that.