Dante's Inferno (1911)

Loosely adapted from Dante's Divine Comedy and inspired by the illustrations of Gustav Doré the original silent film has been restored and has a new score by Tangerine Dream.

Directors:

Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan

Writer:

Dante Alighieri (poem)

Stars:

Salvatore Papa, Arturo Pirovano, Giuseppe de Liguoro

Cast

Cast overview:
Salvatore Papa	...	Dante Alighieri
Arturo Pirovano	...	Virgilio
Giuseppe de Liguoro	...	Farinata degli Uberti
Pier Delle Vigne	...	Il conte Ugolino
Augusto Milla	...	Lucifer
Attilio Motta
Emilise Beretta

Storyline

The poet Dante is lost in a dark and gloomy wood. At the summit of a mountain he sees the light of salvation. He endeavors to ascend to it, but his way is barred by three wild beasts, symbolizing Avarice, Pride and Lust. Beatrice sees his predicament and descends from Paradise into Limbo, where she asks the poet Virgil to rescue and guide Dante. Virgil knows another way to go, but this leads straight through the entire Inferno, before it continues towards Paradise. Virgil leads Dante to the portals of Inferno. Charon ferries them over the river Acheron, and then they start their journey downwards through the different circles of Inferno. Dante meets all kind of sinners and sees the never-ending punishments they have to undergo. The various punishments are adjusted to the different transgressions. Among the sinners Dante recognizes many persons he has met in Florence, when they were still alive. They tell him their sad stories and why they have ended here. At last Dante and Virgil ...

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Plot Keywords:

sinner | punishment | charon | reference to the holy spirit | brain eating | 

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Genres:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Horror

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Details

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

July 1911 (USA)

Also Known As:

Dante's Inferno

Company Credits

Production Co:

Milano Film,SAFFI-Comerio

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White (tinted)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The nine circles of hell are as follows:

1. Limbo- Where souls did not do enough goods deeds to pass into heaven and the unbaptized reside 2. Lust- Swirling, deafening wind vortex that keeps the sexually dominated unsatisfied 3. Gluttony- Muddy filth pits overseen by the three headed dog monster Cerberus 4. Greed- Cavern of spendthrifts and misers condemned to carry around bags of gold under the watch of the demon Pluto 5. Anger- The Stygian Swamp overseen by the Ferryman Phleguyas where the slothful and wrathful are immersed 6. Heresy- Field and Tombs of fires where Heretics are burning in open tombs 7. Violence- The Woods of Suicide overseen by the Harpies and souls chased through by ferocious dogs 8. Fraud- Evil ditches pertaining to Hypocrites, Thieves, Flatterers, Falsifiers and Giants. Hypocrites in long weighing down robes passing the crucified corpse of Jesus Christ's murderer, Thieves burnt and bitten by serpents in a pit, Flatters in an amphitheatre of stone are are bitten by lizards and become humanoid reptilian beasts, Falsifiers in a divided cave present their bodily mutilations and the deepest inner chamber well leading to Treachery overseen by three giants chained at individual times. 9. Treachery- The frozen lake Colyctus where people's waist above's frozen in fear in either individual holes or shared holes where they attack one another, off a dark abyss of the Lake's end is Lucifer himself, a gargantuan winded humanoid with two demonic siding heads feasting upon History's greatest traitors, he is submerged, frozen at the waist in the abyss.

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Goofs

When Francesca and Paolo fly down to speak to Dante in the Circle of Lust, the Kirby wires supporting them are visible.

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Connections

Featured in Gimme Danger (2016)

User Reviews

Epic Adaptation

This was a gigantic production for the time. Its use of sets and hour-plus runtime would help influence the movie-making industries on both sides of the Atlantic to produce longer and more epic films. Additionally, the film-making here isn't bad for 1911 standards, but besides the sets and narrative, it's still basic even for then. The superimposition and stop-substitution trick effects had been in films since nearly the beginning of the medium. And, the tableau style this film adopts, where lengthy title cards describe proceeding action was already becoming outdated. "L'Inferno" contains barely any scene dissection (there's two insert shots I recall, and the one that isn't of Lucifer is of awkward continuity); scenes are one continuous, usually unmoving long-shot view. For comparison, this film was released the same year as D.W. Griffith's "The Lonedale Operator"; the difference in the use, or lack thereof, of the camera, editing and intertitles between the two films is striking. Griffith wasn't the only one to have used varied camera positions, dissected scenes and used crosscutting and continuity editing to make his narratives more cinematic, either.

This is one of the earliest feature-length films to last at least an hour and seems to be the earliest that has survived to this day and been available on video in near complete form. (According to "Dante on View", by Antonella Braida and Luisa Calè, a couple scenes are in the wrong order and another few may be missing.) Even more impressive, however, are the sets by Francesco Bertolini and Sandro Properzi. Production values were already important to the success of the short films in Italy, as evidenced by "Nero" (1909), one of the few earlier Italian films generally accessible today, but they shy in comparison to those on display here. Milano took over production of adapting the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy from another company in 1909 and didn't complete it until 1911. Supposedly, the film cost more than 100,000 lire ("Dante, Cinema & Television"). For comparison, "Cabiria" (1914) supposedly cost 1 million lire (multiple sources) and "Quo Vadis?" (1912/13) cost 48,000 lire (Vernon Jarratt, "Italian Cinema")—all large sums for their time, reportedly. Like "Cabiria" and "Quo Vadis?", "L'Inferno" was also quite successful; in the US, ticket prices went for as high as $2.50 ("Dante on View"), and the film was the first to pave an American market for feature-length films through roadshow bookings and states rights distribution--a system, which for a time, coexisted with the Nickelodeon programs.

This film, of course, is dated. Yet, compared to other early literary/theatrical features, this one holds up rather well. With the help of the sets, the bare plot of Dante's work remains involving and, at least, visually interesting, despite the static camera. The three flashback scenes are also well placed.