Gelsomino in the Land of Liars (Gelsomino nel paese dei bugiardi) is a 1959 children's fantasy novel by Gianni Rodari. In 1977, it was adapted to the screen in the Soviet Union as Gelsomino's Magic Voice.
Gelsomino is a shy, good-hearted guy born with a horrid case of Glass-Shattering Sound No Indoor Voice. As in, his voice makes windows break, fruit fall down, a ball move across the football field, etc. etc. He ends up being persecuted by the rest of the people of his village for supposedly practicing black magic, and has to leave. His journey leads him to a very strange country where it's apparently compulsory to lie.
The novel contains examples of:
- Art Initiates Life:
- Anything Bananito paints comes to life, provided he paints it realistically (so no eight-legged horses would do).
- Zoppino gets animated thanks to Gelsomino's voice. It's so loud the cat has no choice but to jump out of the drawing!
- Bald of Evil: The cruel king Giacomone is completely bald, which is a carefully guarded secret, at least at first.
- Beautiful Singing Voice: If you don't count the fact that it can be, er, uncomfortably loud, Gelsomino's singing is actually lovely.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Benvenuto can't help but come to the assistance of anyone who needs help. Even if it requires him to sit down and age rapidly.
- Compliment Backfire: When Giacomone asks Bananito if he could draw hair like the king’s own (which is a wig, as everyone knows by that point), Bananito replies he isn’t able to draw something that would look as good. He honestly means to cheer the king up as he feels sorry for the latter’s desperate attempts to hide his baldness, but Giacomone is disappointed because he thought of actually asking Bananito to draw real hair for him.
- Direct Line to the Author: The author assures us he has heard the story from Gelsomino himself and that Gelsomino is now alive and well and a famous tenor.
- Doorstopper: Aunt Pannocchia reads aloud a 824-page-long book called A Treatise on Cleanness to Romoletta and Zoppino (both have developed a habit of drawing or writing on walls). Luckily for them, she dozes off herself after only a few chapters.
- Fake-Hair Drama: Giacomone is bald but goes out of the way to hide the fact with a wig, and is extremely unsettled when he starts to realize the people of the city have found it out.
- Fat Bastard: Giacomone is very obese, especially after he left piracy behind and became an Idle Rich king.
- Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: Downplayed, since Aunt Pannocchia is Romoletta’s aunt rather than mother, but she appears to be her only guardian. Aunt Pannocchia is a stern Proper Lady and Romoletta is rebellious and adventurous with a Tomboyish Ponytail (the only thing that lets a casual observer realise she is a girl).
- Former Teen Rebel: The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue reveals that obstinate rule-breaker Romoletta grows up to become a teacher.
- Freakiness Shame: A non-romantic example. Giacomone desperately tries to hide the fact that he's bald, only to find out, in the very end of the book, that there is an entire Bald Club whose members are proud of their baldness and would be delighted to have him as their president.
- Gale-Force Sound: Gelsomino's voice, if he consciously tries to make it louder, has the destructive power of a hurricane.
- Glass-Shattering Sound: Literally, Gelsomino constantly has to be careful so that no windows would break while he is talking.
- Honor Before Reason: When Gelsomino lets out a yell during a football match, the ball flies into the opposing team’s gate by itself. Feeling he has given the team he supports an unfair advantage, Gelsomino yells again, this time making sure it would make the opposing team score.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Gelsomino would have been perfectly content living a quiet village life and isn't really happy with his superloud voice.
- Iron Lady: The Stoic, stern, no-nonsense Aunt Pannocchia (with a Hidden Heart of Gold).
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Aunt Pannocchia keeps many cats. She tries to teach them to meow instead of barking.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Aunt Pannocchia’s greedy landlord who reports her, her niece and her cats to the authorities for truthfulness gets thrown into the same madhouse as them and ends up really going mad.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: Gelsomino's main power is his voice, which can even make drawings come to life. He learns to control it somewhat over the course of the novel.
- Meaningful Name:
- Gelsomino means "jasmine" in Italian. It really fits Gelsomino's gentle personality.
- The opera theatre director's name is Maestro Domisol.
- Meaningful Rename: The narrator claims that Gelsomino took a more impressive-sounding pseudonym after starting his stage career.
- Named After the Injury: Zoppino's name stems from zoppo, the Italian word for lame, because when Romoletta drew the kitten on the wall, she hadn't finished his fourth leg.
- Open Secret: After Zoppino finds out the king wears a wig, he writes it down on the walls everywhere around him. By the next morning, the whole city knows.
- Pet the Dog: In spite of forcing them to adopt a ridiculous culture of lying, Giacomone sometimes shows actual consideration for his subjects.
- When Giacomone sees a cheerful crowd in front of the palace (they’re laughing at his wig, but he doesn’t know that yet), he decides to entertain them with a speech and carefully selects something that he thinks they would enjoy.
- When told about Bananito’s Art Initiates Life talent, he asks him to paint animals for the city zoo — technically it exists, but there have been no animals previously. Afterwards, he makes him the Minister of Provisions, which basically amounts to Bananito painting and handing out free food to the citizens. If one of the generals hadn’t advised Giacomone to order Bananito to paint weapons instead, the king wouldn’t have even wanted to change the situation.
- Please Wake Up: Bananito tries to shake Benvenuto awake before he realizes the latter has died.
- Prevent the War: Bananito goes to prison rather than draw weapons for Giacomone, who's planning to go to war with a neighbouring country. After Giacomone's defeat, the two countries decide to organise a football match instead.
- Rapid Aging: A tragic example in Benvenuto. He ages at lightning speed whenever he sits or lies down and ends up dying at the actual age of ten.
- Rhyming Title: The novel has rhyming chapter titles (Gelsomino risponde all'appello, segna una rete; poi viene il bello; Al vicinato non far sapere che la tua voce matura le pere etc.)
- She's a Man in Japan: The best-known Russian translation turns Zoppino the male kitten into a female, to create an additional pun by making her name rhyme (Koshka-Hromonozhka).
- Sissy Villain: King Giacomone is really, really fond of large, wavy wigs. Especially his usual bright red one.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: The newspaper articles in the Land of Liars have to embody the trope to conform to the law. "It's absolutely not true that the police supposedly is on the lookout for the famous tenor Gelsomino."
- To Be Lawful or Good: Aunt Pannocchia has such respect for rules that after she and her niece are imprisoned in a madhouse merely for being truthful, she is hesitant to run away because it would contradict the rules. However, she decides that the rules are pretty contradictory by themselves.
- Younger Than They Look: Benvenuto looks like an elderly man but is really ten years old due to his Rapid Aging.
Tropes specific to Gelsomino's Magic Voice:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: King Giacomone's red wig becomes golden in the film.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Aunt Pannocchia, a stern disciplinarian in the novel, becomes a nice and pleasant Cool Old Lady.
- Adaptational Personality Change: Gelsomino becomes a fierce revolutionary leader rather than the unassuming Non-Action Guy from the novel.
- Adaptational Villainy: Giacomone and his pirates are way more terrifying than in the novel.
- In the novel, Giacomone actually wants to be liked by the populace (see his Pet the Dog moments above), in the film, he never pretends to be anything but a hateful tyrant.
- In the novel, he shows remorse after his former subjects treat him decently – no such thing in the film.
- In general, while he and his former crew are still capable villains in the book, they are Laughably Evil whenever they appear in person. Here, there is little to laugh at about them, especially considering Giacomone’s first appearance has him casually sentencing women and children to death with a Slasher Smile.
- Demoted to Extra: Benvenuto appears only as a Bit Character old-clothes dealer, and his tragic subplot (which, admittedly, has very little to do with the main story) is cut.
- Fiery Redhead: Instead of Giacomone, Gelsomino is now the red-haired one, which fits his energetic personality.
- Hates Everyone Equally: One of courtiers tells Giacomone there are women and children among the rebels sentenced to death. Giacomone's reply? "What do you mean, women and children? We live in the age of equal rights!"
- Lean and Mean: Unlike in the novel, Giacomone is quite fit (which definitely ups the stakes in the final chase scenes).
- My God, You Are Serious!: Gelsomino has an entire song about it after his arrival in the Land of Liars. He muses that the strange behaviour of its residents resembles a funny game... but they are all looking so glum, so it seems it's not a game after all.
