Porco Rosso

Marco Pagot is the walking epitome of a film noir anti-hero, a taciturn, trenchcoat-clad, chain-smoking loner. Sometime in the 1930s and somewhere in the island world of the Adriatic, he is travelling with his seaplane as a bounty hunter, notorious under the name Porco Rosso. The second word of his nickname refers to the fiery red colour of his plane, but the first to himself: a mysterious curse has given Porco Rosso the face of a pig. However, the local pirates are fed up with his snout and hire the smug flying ace Curtis to shoot him out of the clouds. Porco must now learn to accept the help of cheeky flight engineer Fio in order to outdo Curtis, escape the fascists, save his thick skin and perhaps rediscover his humanity in the process.

Initially developed as a short film commissioned by Japan Airlines, "Porco Rosso" is probably Miyazaki's most personal film, not only because of its clear political statement, but also because of the wonderful wealth of detail in the flight technology, which Miyazaki, as the son of an aeronautical engineer, really knows something about.

"Nowhere are European landscapes and places as much places of longing as in 'Porco Rosso'."
The World