Porco Rosso

• 1. Introduction

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  Porco Rosso is a 1992 Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki about a man who has become a pig. Not metaphorically. Marco Pagot, an Italian ace from the First World War, flies a red seaplane over the Adriatic Sea, hunting air pirates for hire. He has a snout, pink skin, and bristled ears. Nobody in the film explains why. How did an Italian war hero end up as a freelance bounty hunter with the face of a hog? What happened to him in that war? And who is the woman at Hotel Adriano, sitting in her garden every afternoon, waiting for a man who only ever comes to her in the dark?

• 2. A Film That Grew

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  Production on Porco Rosso began in the summer of 1989, rooted in Miyazaki's manga Hikōtei Jidai, a story about the age of flying boats. The project started as something modest: a short in-flight entertainment piece for Japan Airlines passengers. It was a small idea for a small screen. Then it began to expand.

  Producer Toshio Suzuki noticed the film's obsession with aircraft and pitched the airline on a different arrangement. Japan Airlines came on board as the project's primary investor, and Porco Rosso became Japan's first in-flight feature film production, intended only for international routes. Production stalled early due to high costs, but resumed in November 1990 with an initial budget of 200 million yen and a planned runtime of thirty minutes.

  Miyazaki's storyboards refused to stay short. By August 1991 the runtime had stretched to 45 minutes, then to a full hour, which was enough to qualify it as a theatrical feature. A theatrical release was negotiated to run alongside the airline screening, and Telecom Animation Film Co., Ltd. helped animate the finished picture.

  The outbreak of war in Yugoslavia changed the film's atmosphere. The story was set in Dalmatia, and the fighting unfolding in Dubrovnik and elsewhere during production pushed the tone toward something heavier. A more complicated film emerged than anyone had originally planned. The opening title card, acknowledging the airline's investment, was printed simultaneously in ten languages: Japanese, Italian, Korean, English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, French, and German.

• 3. Marco Pagot and His Curse

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  Porco Rosso lives on a hidden beach that bears a strong resemblance to Stiniva Beach, on the southern Croatian island of Vis. He operates as a freelance bounty hunter working the Adriatic, taking contracts against the gangs of air pirates who prey on ships and ocean liners. He dines at the Hotel Adriano, run by a woman named Gina, who was once married to Porco's closest friend from the war.

  The film never states plainly why Marco has the head of a pig. What the story does provide is a single wartime memory. During a dogfight, Marco flew into a cloud to escape his pursuers. He blacked out, and when he woke he was above the clouds in total stillness. The men who had died in the battle, including his friend Bellini, were rising out of the cloud to join a vast stream of planes flying together. Marco offered to die in Bellini's place, for Gina's sake. He was refused. He woke again, flying alone over the sea.

  He concludes from this that he is meant to "fly solo." Gina is in love with him. She sits in her garden every afternoon waiting for him. He visits only at night, in the dim light, when his face is harder to see. A warrant exists for his arrest in Italy, where the new fascist government has been hiring the very pirates he hunts, driving him out of business. The curse, the warrant, and the self-imposed isolation are all of a piece.

  The young engineer Fio Piccolo, who rebuilds his plane at her grandfather's Milan shop, glimpses his real face while he sleeps. She rebukes his philosophy of solitude and kisses him on the cheek. She is the one who finally names what his isolation costs the people around him.

• 4. Rivals and Reference Points

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  Donald Curtis, the American ace hired to defeat Porco, flies a Curtiss R3C, built for the 1925 Schneider Cup race. Porco mentions the race when he first encounters him. The name Curtis is almost certainly drawn from Glenn Hammond Curtiss, the aviation pioneer who helped found the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. As a character, though, Curtis is modeled on a different archetype: Miyazaki designed him as an oblique reference to Ronald Reagan, a man with ambitions in both Hollywood and the presidency. His buccaneering energy, his willingness to fight, and his romantic ardor pull from the adventure films of Errol Flynn, whose jawline Curtis reportedly shares.

  Their final confrontation resolves in a way that deflates heroics entirely. Both planes' guns jam during the duel. The aerial combat devolves into a boxing match in shallow water. Curtis knocks Porco out, then gets knocked out in return. Gina calls Porco's name and he rises first. He is declared the winner on that margin.

  The main character's real name, Marco Pagot, pays tribute to the Pagot brothers, pioneers of Italian animation. Nino and Toni Pagot made Italy's first animated feature film. Nino's children Marco and Gi Pagot later worked with Miyazaki on Sherlock Hound. The name sewn into the lead character is a quiet thank-you across generations of animation history.

• 5. Aircraft as Archaeology

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  Miyazaki's love of early aviation is built into every frame. The fictional Piccolo aircraft company in the film draws directly from the real Italian manufacturers Caproni and Piaggio. The jet seaplane glimpsed in the final scene resembles the Caproni C-22J, designed by a man named Carlo Ferrarin, whose surname Miyazaki lifted for Porco's air force friend in the film.

  Porco's plane is called the Savoia S.21, but its shape is based on the Macchi M.33. The engine being fitted in Piccolo's workshop has the word "Ghibli" stamped on its rocker covers, a V-12 narrow-angle design similar to racing engines of the period. Piccolo tells Porco the engine was used in a racing airplane for the Schneider Trophy race in the year before the story takes place. The Savoia-Marchetti S.55, the Fiat C.R.20, and the Macchi M.39 all appear in the film.

  The historical references extend to real people. Porco's friend Ferrarin takes his name from Italian Air Force pilot Arturo Ferrarin, who flew an Ansaldo SVA.9 from Rome to Tokyo in 1920. A test pilot named Bellini died during attempts to set seaplane speed records with the Macchi M.C.72; Miyazaki gave Porco's killed wartime comrade that same name. Fighter aces Francesco Baracca and Adriano Visconti also appear in the film. The name of Miyazaki's own studio, Studio Ghibli, came from the Caproni Ca.309 light reconnaissance aircraft, known as the "Ghibli."

  In 2013, Miyazaki returned to this territory with The Wind Rises, his film about the aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi. Porco Rosso is in many ways the emotional rehearsal for that later work.

• 6. Music and Political Memory

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  Joe Hisaishi composed the Porco Rosso soundtrack with a full orchestra of 70 musicians, released on the 25th of July, 1992. Tokiko Kato, who voices Gina in the Japanese version, performs both vocal songs on the album. Miyazaki cast her for the role specifically because he had admired her work for years.

  The film opens with "Le temps des cerises," a French song whose lyrics were written in 1866 by Jean-Baptiste Clement, with music by Antoine Renard. It began as a love song, but after the Paris Commune of 1871 it became a touchstone of the French left. Playing it over aerial sequences set in interwar fascist Italy is not an accident. Miyazaki was explicit in interviews about his anti-fascist intent. The ending song, "Toki ni wa Mukashi no Hanashi wo," was written and composed by Kato herself.

  The political resonance of the film has outlasted its original release. Porco's line "Better a pig than a fascist" circulated among Spanish artist circles ahead of Spain's 2023 general elections, where it became a rallying phrase encouraging votes against far-right parties.

• 7. Release and Legacy

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  Porco Rosso opened in Japan on the 18th of July, 1992, distributed by Toho. It finished the year as the number-one film at the Japanese box office. In France, it sold 167,793 tickets. European grosses outside France added another $573,719.

  The English-language dub history is unusually layered. Japan Airlines commissioned the first English version in 1992, produced in Japan and supervised by Ward Sexton, who also voiced Porco. The dub was included in the 1996 Ghibli ga Ippai Laserdisc Box Set and later on the 2002 Japanese DVD release, both of which are now out of print.

  Walt Disney Home Entertainment released a second English dub on DVD on the 22nd of February, 2005, with Michael Keaton voicing Porco, Cary Elwes as Curtis, Susan Egan as Gina, and Kimberly Williams-Paisley as Fio. Tony Bancroft supervised the dub, with the screenplay by Don and Cindy Hewitt. The French dub of the film cast Jean Reno as Porco. GKIDS re-released the film on Blu-ray and DVD on the 21st of November, 2017, under a new distribution agreement with Studio Ghibli.

  At the 1993 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the film won the Cristal du long metrage, the prize for best feature-length animated film. On Rotten Tomatoes, 96 percent of 25 critics gave it a positive review, with an average rating of 8.2/10. Metacritic placed it at 83 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim."

  In 2011, Miyazaki said he wanted to make a sequel set during the Spanish Civil War, with Porco as a veteran pilot. The working title was Porco Rosso: The Last Sortie. The studio has since said the sequel is not in their current plans.