- Within the stillness of the late Geppetto's woodworking cottage, the man Pinolo seeks refuge from the turmoil of the world he chose to follow long ago but what he discovers instead is a life that has been lost.
- Theme music begins as the opening credits roll. Its night time and the camera follows the path of a light shining through the window from a police searchlight as it examines the interior of a woodshop where puppets and toys were once made and where the sounds of police sirens and dogs barking outside can be heard.
Camera finds the door as a nail in it suddenly starts turning by some unseen force from the other side and a key thats been resting on the nail falls to the ground. A wire appears under the bottom of the door and hooks the key, pulls it outside.
We hear the key inserted into the keyhole and the cylinder bolt retract. The door flies open and Pinolo, an old man gasping for breath and suffering incredible pain from a bullet in his thigh, dressed in prison garb and shackled, enters and closes the door behind him. As he peaks out the curtains, a flashlight beam drives him back into the door where he slides to the floor and locks it.
Sitting on the floor, his back to the door, writhing in pain as he presses his hands over the open wound on his thigh, he looks up and sees a toy soldier hanging near the door frame staring back at him. The toy soldier is bandaged. As Pinolo staggers past it, he confronts it, yells at it, calls it pathetic as it knows nothing of what pain really feels like.
As he struggles to cross the room, Pinolo trips on the runner of a childs rocking horse and falls to the floor, where hes pinned by a flashlight beam that moves in on the rocking horse, threatening to give him away. Panicked, Pinolo steadies the horse with his shoe as the policemans light passes over it.
Pinolo ties a cloth tightly around his thigh above the bullet wound, checks the window once-more, then lights an oil lantern and crosses toward a small rug nearby. Under the rug is a grate under which Pinolo removes what he believes is his fathers cash box but instead contains a few of his fathers mementos. Disappointed, he tosses it aside. A toy sailboat flies out.
Frustrated, he attempts to saw off his shackles at a workbench where he locks a hancuff in a vise. The hack saw blade slips off and he cuts his hand with it, instead. He flings the hacksaw and it hits a puppet, the figure of a girl dressed in old-world clothing. It falls to the bench. Pinolo is stunned to see the puppet, gently picks it up and talks to it as he places it on a chair and sits down across the table from it.
He calls the puppet, Rosalita, tells it he doesnt blame her for being angry with him, and that he has done many bad things and deserves even harsher punishment. Hungry, he lights a second oil lamp and crosses to the adjacent room in search of food in the cupboard. The cupboard is bare but as he closes the doors, he sees a picture hanging on the wall nearby, a photo of himself as a young man. He muses that his father mustve hung it up after he ran away.
Pinolo places the picture on the table in front of Rosalita, tells her how he hated the picture and how he smashed it out of anger. Showing her his bleeding hand, he tells her shes better off being puppet that cant feel than being a human that bleeds.
Pinolo picks up the toy sailboat that flew out of the cash box moments earlier. He recalls his father made it for him, his first toy. He remembers sitting at the table watching his father work and begging to let him help.
A letter in the cash box from his father describes hoe he became ill and had no one to care for him. As Pinolo, heartbroken, crying, speculates that his father probably died of consumption, the Blue Fairy appears and confronts Pinolo, tells him his father died of a broken heart.
Pinolo snaps back that she, the Blue Fairy, is to blame for his suffering, that she and his father believed him to be something he never was. He tells her he tried over and over to change but no matter what he did, he couldnt become what they wanted him to be.
As the police bang on the door, he implores her to not let them capture him and to fix it, as she is the only one who can. She raises her wand and taps him with it. The police barge in and search the room. One finds shackles and a prisoner uniform lying atop a puppet with along nose and the film ends.
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