Original
Title: Kurenai no Buta
Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
Written by: Hayao
Miyazaki
Music by: Joe Hisaishi
Production Period: May 31, 1983 - March 6, 1984
Released on: July 18, 1992 (Japan)
Running Time: 93 minutes
Budget: $
Box-Office: top box-office hit of that
year in Japan, Porco Rosso grossed a total of ¥2,710 million,
becoming the top-grossing animated film in Japan at the time
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Porco Rosso... Shûichirô Moriyama
Gina... Tokiko Kato
Donald Curtis... Akio Ôtsuka
Fio Piccolo... Akemi Okamura
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"Porco Rosso" means "Crimson Pig" in Italian. This is the official
title that the Studio Ghibli gave to it.
In the French version, Jean Reno (Mission: Impossible) was
the voice of Porco Rosso.
In the first -mediocre- American version, the last line of the
movie about Gina's bet was not dubbed, for no apparent reason.
To show it on JAL's international flights, the introduction had
to be provided in many languages: the opening lines had to be written in
Japanese, Italian, Korean, English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Russian,
French, and German!
Although it was never mentioned in the movie, a press release states
that Porco Rosso was disillusioned with humanity, and cursed himself to
be a pig. Miyazaki stated that "When a man becomes middle-aged, he becomes
a pig". It seems that Porco is carrying a lot of baggage, and that has
something to do with him quitting being a human.
Pigs play a very important part in Hayao Miyazaki's universe -they're
also at the center of A Thousand and Chihiros
Spirited Away. Flying is also a recurrent theme -possibly because
Hayao's father was the director of Miyazaki
Airplane during World War II.
Susan Egan (the
voice of Meg in Hercules)
announced on her official
webpage in May 2003 that she had been cast in a singing and speaking
role in Porco Rosso, being produced by Disney.
Porco originally appeared in 1990, as a three-part manga story ("Zassou Note, Hikoutei Jidai" i.e. "Miscellaneous Memoranda—The age of Seaplanes") in the pages of "Model Grafix" magazine.
The animated movie was first planned as a 30-45 minutes in-flight movie on Japan Airlines -adds Hayao Miyazaki, "a movie which tired businessmen on international flights can enjoy even with their minds dulled due to lack of oxygen". But as Miyazaki's imagination took off, it became a feature-length movie.
Most
of the story, except when Porco went to Milan, took place in the Adriatic,
between Italy and the former Yugoslavia, in the late 1920s. Porco lived
on an island on the Croatian shoreline of the Adriatic sea. At first,
Miyazaki planned to set the story in Dovrok City, Croatia. However, Miyazaki
was shocked by the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, which started while
he was making "Porco". As a result, the story became a bit more serious
than he intended (at first it was supposed to be "a fun movie for middle-aged
businessmen whose brains became tofu from overwork"), and he moved the
story out of Croatia.
Captain Marco Pagot (named after an Italian animator, who is a friend of Miyazaki) was an ace pilot of the Italian Air Force during World War I. He quit the IFA since he saw fascism on the rise, and he wanted to fly following his own will. He became a bounty hunter, assuming the name "Porco Rosso". He crossed out his own face as a young man in the picture that Gina had hung on the wall of her restaurant, so that no one would know what he looked like as a human.
Miyazaki said that Porco once intended to marry Gina, but then World
War I broke out, and Gina was living on an island which was Austrian territory.
As a military officer, he could not bring himself to marry an enemy national.
Torn between his loyalty to his home country and his love for Gina, he
chose his country. But when he witnessed the deaths of his fellow pilots,
including that of his best friend (Gina's husband), he started wondering
about the meaning of his actions, and the meaning of flying and dying for
his country. Unable to resolve the conflicts in his mind, he became a pig.
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