Hayao Miyazaki’s love of aviation found its most obvious outlet in Porco Rosso, an otherwise atypical film from the director in that it features virtually no fantasy elements at all – apart from the not inconsiderable fact that the eponymous character is a flying pig… Indeed the events of the film would have played out exactly the same if Porco had been his human former self, Marco, all along.
Porco Rosso (Shuichiro Moriyama in the Japanese version, Michael Keaton in the later Disney dub), a humanoid pig who, as the human Marco, served as a fighter pilot in the Italian air force in World War I. He now finds work as a bounty hunter, patrolling the Adriatic in search of sky pirates aboard his bright red seaplane. The Mamma Aiuto pirate gang hires the American adventurer and film star Curtis (Akio Otsuka/Carey Elwes) to help them deal with Porco but complications arise when he falls for Gina (Tokiko Kato/Susan Egan), owner of the Hotel Adriano who is secretly in love with Porco. When Porco heads for fascist-controlled Turin (Milan in the English language version) to have his aircraft serviced by aircraft mechanic Piccolo (Sanshi Katsura/David Ogden Stiers), he survives an attempt on his life by Curtis. He returns to the Adriatic with Piccolo’s granddaughter Fio (Akemi Okamura/Kimberly Williams-Paisley) in tow after she proves her engineering chops by completely redesigning and vastly improving his aircraft. With the fascists recruiting freelance seaplane fighters and threatening to put Porco out of business, things come to a head between Porco and Curtis who agree to an air duel, Fio offering to marry Curtis if Porco loses. But the Italian air force are on their way and the two pilots have to agree to join forces to lead them away from the pirates…
Porco Rosso started life as three-part watercolour manga, Hikotei Jidai/The Age of the Flying Boat, that Miyazaki had written and illustrated for Model Graphix magazine in 1990. Japan Airlines had originally wanted to adapt the manga as a short film to be shown on their flights but Miyazaki adapted it into a feature film. The airline stayed on board as a major investor and were allowed to show the film on long-haul flights ahead of it getting a more traditional release in cinemas.
The film marked a return to the high adventure and spectacular action of Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta/Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) after the relatively smaller scale Tonari no Totoro/My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and Majo no Takkyūbin/Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) (and owes something to Michael Curtiz’s classic Casablanca (1942) to boot). It’s also his most slapstick and knockabout since his pre-Ghibli feature film directorial debut Rupan Sansei: Kariosutoro no Shiro/The Castle of Cagliostro (1979). As such, perhaps, it’s one of his more under-rated films, not as fondly remembered as the more overtly fantastic earlier films or as lauded as his more complex and ambitious post Mononoke-hime/Princess Mononoke (1997) work.
Which is a shame as it’s another extraordinary work, a joyous film about love and acceptance (it’s one of the very few Miyazaki films in which romance plays an important role) that also explores a darker sub-strata – Miyazaki doesn’t belabour the point but the Milan scenes are set against the backdrop of the rise of fascism in Italy (“I’d rather be a pig than a fascist”). It was rare for a Miyazaki film to be set in a readily identifiable time and place (here we’re clearly between the wars in towns on the Baltic coast and Milan) the making of Porco Rosso coincided with the outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia, a fact that Miyzaki told Empire magazine made it “a more complicated film. It was a very difficult film and I was so disappointed that I’d made something for middle-aged men, because I’d been telling my staff always to make films for children and then what did I do?” In the same interview he referred to “the curse of Porco Rosso.”
And yet despite the shift in target audience from younger children to adults, Porco Rosso retains some of the simple ebullience of his earlier work, particularly in the film’s many flying scenes. The flashback scene in which Porco – in his human form – sees a vast convoy of the spirit planes of downed pilots gathering around him is breath-taking. And the climactic air duel between Porco and Curtis is a thing of beauty, the planes soaring around the bay, scattering terrified observers, the two men so determined to best each other that they comically and ineffectually resort to simply throwing things at each other when their bullets run out or their guns jam.
It retains some of the old Miyzaki magic in its smaller scale, quieter moments too, as when Fio briefly sees Porco in his human form. There’s a hint that Curtis might see him as human too at the very end of the film. There’s no reason why Marco became the talking humanoid pig Porco – Miyazaki just asks you to accept it like the characters in the film and it’s remarkable how we never question it. Miyazaki would often sketch himself with porcine features in self-portraits and would feature pigs in his films again, from the boar god Nago in Princess Mononoke to the pig parents in Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/Spirited Away (2001).
Porco is an unusual hero for Miyazaki, world-weary, cynical and not averse to acts of violence if he thinks its required. His relationship with the Gina, one of the most realistically realised characters in any Miyazaki film (she looks more like one of the characters from Isao Takahata’s Omoide Poro Poro/Only Yesterday (1991)) could have been creepy with its hints of bestiality but Miyazaki deftly skirts any such issues and we never once question the bizarre set-up. Indeed by the end we’re fully invested in this most unlikely of relationships and the final shots of Porco’s distinctive red plane parked outside and flying over Gina’s hotel gives us hope that it all worked out.
Fio’s enthusiasm, humour and youthful energy contrasts nicely with Porco’s cynicism. Porco Rosso is again unusual for not revolving around the life of a young female character, Fio being the closest Porco Rosso has to Miyazaki’s usual leading character. The next time Miyazaki would focus so much on a male character would be in another aviation-themed film, 2013’s Kaze Tachinu/The Wind Rises (2013).
The pirates that Porco skirmishes with a pretty useless bunch (“show some ambition, you’re a pirate!”) but appear to be in direct line of descent from Captain Dola and her air pirates in Laputa: Castle in the Sky – they even dress in a similar fashion. Miyazaki gives them a moment of redemption at the end when we learn that they’ve settled into comfortable retirement, hanging out at the Hotel Adriano while Curtis returned to the States and became a big, Errol Flynn-like film star. The real villains of the film – the shadowy fascists – are glossed over.
Porco Rosso was another huge hit for Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, the biggest box office draw in Japan in 1992 in fact. Miyazaki has long expressed a desire to return to the world of Porco Rosso, announcing Porco Rosso: The Last Sortie, a sequel set during the Spanish Civil War. Miyazaki indicated that he had written the script and that Hiromasa Yonebayashi (director of Ghibli’s Omoide no Mānī/When Marnie Was There (2014)) was going to direct. Sadly Ghibli later pulled the plug on the project and there remains some doubt as to whether it’ll ever be made.
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