A marionette is a type of puppet moved by strings, as in a puppet show. In the western world, they originated from the medieval times in France and can be found in every country in the world. The word "marionette" comes from French, where it was a diminutive of "Marion", which was a diminutive of "Marie".They can be found in box theatres, curtain theatres and black light theatres. Marionettes are considered by many to be very entertaining for both adults and children.

Pinocchio is a particularly famous marionette. The musical The Sound of Music contains a fairly detailed scene involving several marionettes worked on a stage. Another very famous television marionette is Howdy Doody. In the 1960s TV producer Gerry Anderson and his colleagues pioneered a technique combining marionettes with electronic components, typically to control facial features, which they dubbed "supermarionation".

Sicilian Marionettes

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Sicily is home to two prominent folk art traditions, both of which draw heavily on the island's Norman and Provençal influence. Donkey carts are painted with intricate decorations of scenes from the Frankish romantic poems, such as The Song of Roland. The same tales are told in traditional puppet theatres which feature hand-made wooden marionettes. These puppet theatres are called Opira dî pupi (or opera of the puppets) in Sicilian. These same puppet theatres, and the centuries old Sicilian tradition of cantastorî (literally sing stories) have their roots in the Provençal troubadour tradition, prominent in Sicily during the reign of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor in the first half of the 13th century. A great place to see these is the puppet theatres of Palermo, Sicily.

The part that controls the marionette is called the hand.

Marionette sightings in culture

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• Sound of Music
• Tillamook Treasure: a 2005 feature film in which Floyd Red Crow Westerman and Max Gail play puppeteers. The marionettes, carved by master puppeteer Phillip Huber to look like characters in the film. Huber (Huber Marionettes) performed all the puppet manipulations in the film.
• Thunderbirds: a television series in which all characters were marionettes.
• Being John Malkovich: a 1999 movie starring John Cusack as a street puppeteer whose performances include marionette adaptations of the story of Abélard and Heloise. Puppeteers who worked on this include Images in Motion, Coad Canada Puppets, and the Huber Marionettes.
• The Double Life of Véronique: a 1991 film by Krzysztof Kieślowski
• World Police: a 2004 movie using Thunderbirds-style marionettes.
• Marionettes took an evil turn when featured in a popular PS2 game Devil May Cry where they became the key enemy.
• In later Castlevania games, marionettes also become enemies. They usually appear as wooden dolls which can cast curse on the heroes upon contact. One major exception to this is in Dawn of Sorrow, where there is a boss named Puppet Master, who is a giant marionette himself, and attacks using iron maidens.
• Saber Marionette is a collection of several anime series, manga, audio dramas and OVAs originally created by Satoru Akahori, primarilly involving various robotic female characters called marionettes.

Puppetry

Marionette | Pupo | Marioneta | Marionnette | Marionetka | Марионетка | Marionett | Mарионета