Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that explores what makes Studio Ghibli’s 1992 film Porco Rosso so great.
I don’t think it’s fair to call Porco Rosso underrated.
Studio Ghibli‘s 1992 film boasts a 95% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.7/10 on IMDb. It was well-received by audiences and critics alike and remains in high esteem decades after its release. This is definitely not a case of a film being dunked on by culture vultures despite some then-unrecognized value.
What folks mean, I think, when they toss around words like “underrated” in relation to Porco Rosso, is that the film doesn’t feel like it’s had its day in the sun. At least — or perhaps, especially — from the perspective of a Western audience. To boot, when there are so many unambiguously canonized films in Hayao Miyazaki’s catalog, it’s easy to look unsung in comparison.
This is a long walk to say that I have my semantic quibbles with calling Porco Rosso underrated. But I completely agree with the underlying sentiment: that Porco Rosso is something of an outlier within Ghibli’s animated output. It’s weird for Miyazaki (and the studio synonymous with his name) to make a film so grounded in reality: to set a film during a real-time period in a real place.
So, what can a movie about flying pigs teach us about fascism in the Italian interwar period? What makes Porco Rosso worthy of praise in the same breath as the likes of Howl’s Moving Castle or Kiki’s Delivery Service? The following video essay has some answers.
Beware visual and story spoilers for Porco Rosso, a film you should go see if you haven’t already.
Watch “Better a Pig than a Fascist”
Who made this?
This video essay on why Porco Rosso rules is by Accented Cinema, a Canadian-based YouTube video essay series with a focus on foreign cinema. You can subscribe to Accented Cinema for bi-weekly uploads here. You can follow them on Twitter here.
More videos like this
- For more of Accented Cinema’s work, here’s a video that takes a look at the themes and intertextuality of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s film Drive My Car.
- Here is another example: what Princess Mononoke can teach us about Hayao Miyazaki‘s thematic focus as a director.
- Here’s their two-part look at the history and continuing influence of the “gun-fu” genre, the genre that dares to ask, “what if punching your gun forward made the bullets hit harder”?
- They also have a detailed (and very funny) breakdown of four different common approaches to translating movie titles for international audiences.
- And finally, here’s their essay that explores 2019’s Lupin III: The First and why it’s an exemplary entry in modern 3D animation.
Related Topics: Hayao Miyazaki, Porco Rosso, The Queue
