L'Inferno

Plot synopsis:
The exhumation of Lizzie Siddal's desiccated body is seen, followed by a shot of Rossetti dancing among the flames of a bonfire of paintings by Reynolds and Gainsborough. A voice-over informs us that Rossetti is a founder of a revolutionary group of artists called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The figure of the young Lizzie dressed as Joan of Arc appears above the flames.
Lizzie is seen modelling for Millais' Ophelia and for a painting of Joan by Rossetti. The voice-over states that she eats little and often throws it up. She and Rossetti spend several years together while he paints and draws her, but she spurns his sexual advances, even slashing him with a needle when he presses himself on her. Rossetti turns to the more accommodating Fanny Cornforth.
Lizzie is introduced to laudanum by Emma Brown to alleviate her stomach pain. She is advised by Christina Rossetti that Dante Gabriel needs a patron. Christina's voice-over speaks her poem In an Artist's Studio, about Lizzie. She tells Lizzie she looks ill. Rossetti and Christina visit William Holman Hunt, who is painting The Light of the World. Hunt asks Rossetti to look after his girlfriend Annie Miller while he is away in the Holy Land painting The Scapegoat, but Rossetti has an affair with her and Hunt spurns her on his return. John Ruskin visits Rossetti's studio and shows an interest in Lizzie's art.
Rossetti meets Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris in Oxford and encounters the beautiful Jane Burden. They paint the Oxford Union murals. Jane marries Morris and Rossetti marries Lizzie. Lizzie becomes increasingly hysterical due to her laudanum use and Rossetti's philandering. She dies from an overdose. Rossetti buries his unpublished poems with her.
Some years later, Charles Augustus Howell persuades him to dig the poems up, but Rossetti is haunted by the image of the dead Lizzie and becomes addicted to chloral. Fanny Cornforth rescues him from a suicide attempt, but Rossetti is now increasingly obsessed with Morris' wife Jane. He sleeps with her when Morris is away in Iceland, but she remains distant. Isolated, with only the loyal Fanny to care for him, Rossetti sinks further into addiction.

Tags: psychedelic, violence

Review:
A striking piece of history, this 1911 adaptation of Dante's The Divine Comedy was the first full length feature made in Italy.Taking visual inspiration from Gustav Doré's iconic illustrations, Giuseppe de Liguoro worked for more than three years with 150 people and what was then the biggest film budget ever to complete his masterpiece.Newly restored from a variety of sources, it's still an amazing visual experience as the poet Virgil leads Dante on a journey through Purgatory and Hell.L'Inferno's pantheon of demons and sinners are imaginatively conjured up on ambitious sets using a variety of then-pioneering cinematic tricks such as forced perspective to allow a gigantic Pluto to rage at the dwarfed interlopers, overlays for when they arrive at the city of Dis and see furies scaling the battlements and an ingenious combination of miniatures and live action to create remarkable encounters with three chained giants and a final confrontation with Lucifer himself.In between these set pieces, Dante and his guide meet a rogues gallery of history's great sinners and the ironically apposite corners of Hell reserved just for them.The only real pitchfork in the backside of this otherwise commendable project is the decision to harness the visuals to a soundtrack culled from Tangerine Dream's concept album based on the same literary source.It's not the German electronic outfit's best work and comes with the additional burden of vocals which tend to detract from the Gothic mood created by the visuals alone.Still, you can always turn down the sound and play something more sympathetic, say, Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra, because this is one screen gem that deserves to be enjoyed several times over..
Fantastic film for anyone interested in film history, Dante's Divine Comedy, or genre movies.
The pure ambition of setting this story to film and the impressive staging of the circles of hell overcome the lack of sophisticated cinematic language to which we are accustomed.
These folks should be put in movie jail for plastering their names all over it in the artificial credit sequence and marrying the modern and inappropriate Tangerine Dream music to the picture - not as an audio option, mind you, but as the only option!
The ridiculous way in which the credits are appended (tons of credits for each Tangerine Dream musician down to whoever provided the donuts during their sessions, but only a bare few credits for the 150 people who actually made this fantastic film in 1911.
There is a circle of hell in L'Inferno for film 'remix' people like these..
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.
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.
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.
With the help of the sets, the bare plot of Dante's work remains involving and, at least, visually interesting, despite the static camera.
So, for my second viewing, I muted the television and played an old piece of classical music based on Dante's original epic.
Another gripe is that the DVD producer's added an electronic music score, which also features lyrics from some woman singer, which sound horrid and really doesn't add anything to the film.
After the first few minutes I turned the soundtrack off and watched the film without any music.
Story" by Clive Hirschhorn, telling what the Warner brothers did after Edison's infamous Trust had "persuaded" them to sell their film exchange business, which would have been in 1911 or 1912, "It was only a matter of months, however, before Sam Warner returned from a trip to New York having bought the rights for a five-reeler called Dante's Inferno based on the famous poem.
A Must-See View of the Poem of Dante Alighieri with the Music of Tangerine Dream.
During his journey, Dante meets poets and different sinners being punished by their transgressions."L'Inferno" is a must-see view of the poem of Dante Alighieri with the music of Tangerine Dream.
One century later, the visual concept of Limbo and Inferno of Gustavo Doré used by directors Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro is still impressive, giving the sensation of pictures in movement at an exhibition, specially considering that the cinema technology was in its beginning.
A strange beast this one; apparently the first ever Italian feature film, based on Dante (with some unacknowledged visual indebtedness to Gustav Dore) L'inferno has lately resurfaced on DVD complete with a new soundtrack, and by Tangerine Dream no less.
A great film, full of early fantastical touches, L'inferno still makes for reasonably enthralling viewing, especially as the shooting style of the time - slow moving tableaux, with no close ups - is eminently suited to Dante's epic narrative based around a grand tour of horror.
Some of the many special effects are reminiscent of Melies' imagination (if far less studio bound than the work of the French master), as Dante and his guide, the poet Virgil, progress through the various circles of Hell, viewing increasingly horrendous torments on display.
There's also no real story: it's a series of tableaux depicting Dante and Virgil moving through the different circles of Hell.
Some of the trick photography is among the best that was available at that time (and men like Melies did a fantastic job even ten years before the release of this film); some is 'rags on a stick'-variety.
WARNING: This review contains explicit language which some people may find offensive.I attended a special screening of "L'Inferno" at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan; for this screening, the film's intertitles had been removed, and the movie's dialogue and narration were spoken live by the brilliant actors Len Cariou and Roberta Maxwell, accompanied by an appropriately hellish violin score by Gil Morgenstern.For all its considerable crudeness, this early film is still powerful.
Several flashbacks contain interior shots, featuring painted sets of the style which modern audiences will attribute to French film-maker Georges Melies.I try to perceive every film that I view in the context of its own time.
I feel that he should have been less literal and more colloquial: when Dante described a damned soul "making a fig", it wasn't immediately clear to the (mostly American) audience that this referred to an obscene hand-gesture.For all its crudity, this is an astonishing film with great visual impact.
This remains a remarkable film, particularly given its time.It helps to have read Dante's "L'Inferno" before seeing it.
Actually, the fantasy element of the whole – which sees the national Italian poet journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise has always intrigued me – even if one requires special knowledge (since it makes specific references to events and people in the author's life and times) to fully appreciate the text.
That said, the "Inferno" is the most popular segment and, given my own predilection for Horror, it is just as well: this Silent production, then, running 68 minutes in the version I acquired (accompanied by a serviceable Tangerine Dream score which, however, comes with a handful of songs that not only merely reiterate what is already in the text but actively interfere with it!) is famous for being Italy's very first feature-length film – incidentally, it was being constantly projected over the walls of the main hall of the "Palazzo Del Cinema" during the 2004 Venice Film Festival to which my brother and I had been accredited to attend!Before I go into the movie proper, I must say that I am always surprised to see nudity in early movies – but this one has easily the most extensive amount of this, since virtually all of the condemned are presented in their birthday suit (albeit either strategically positioned to obscure genitalia or else donning pieces of cloth over 'offensive' parts of the body)!
Anyway, as I have often remarked about such 'museum pieces', it is hard in hindsight to properly evaluate the artistic quality of the film (which essentially hinges on its faithful recreation of the influential Gustav Dore' illustrations inspired by Dante's work).
Mind you, if one had to compare it to what was emanating from the U.S. at the time, this obviously wins hands down on the basis of sheer ambition and scope alone (pioneer D.W. Griffith would be restricted to two-reelers until 1913) – but, then, the film-making approach here is in the, admittedly, then-prevalent vein of wildly (and relentlessly) gesticulating actors within tableaux-like scenes, with plot progression depicted not through the (eventually) natural expedient of editing but rather by having an intertitle describe the next 'moving image'!
In any case, Alighieri's muse Beatrice asks the poet Virgil to accompany Dante on his odyssey through the nine circles of Hell where the dead are eternally punished for having committed a variety of sins, each level representing a more heinous transgression than the one before (for instance, misers and spendthrifts are forever made to roll bags of gold and rebuke each other of their respective foible)!
Along the way, they meet a number of well-known historical personages (Cleopatra for her lustiness, Ulysses for the bad advise he gave during the Trojan War{!} and, in a bit of poetic justice, Caiaphas is crucified to the ground for having hypocritically rejected his own Messiah: bafflingly, there is even a designated spot where all the good people born before the advent of Christ on Earth can 'reside', obviously without being castigated!) but also more obscure ones known by Virgil and Dante and whom the latter in particular verbally and physically lashes out at (recognizing one even if he is standing upside-down with his head in a hole), or they at him!
Guarding the damned are a horde of demons who, again, either are not pleased to receive the poets' visit (though they can hardly protest since this tour is apparently being conducted through Divine will!) or they gleefully curse/torment their charges.As I said earlier, we also get interjections in which the fates of a handful of tragic figures are shown: these include clandestine lovers Paolo and Francesca and Count Ugolino (betrayed, imprisoned and starved to death by his former friend, an Archbishop, in the netherworld he continually gnaws at the latter's head in an icy ambiance!) – interestingly, these accounts were eventually turned into films that I own but have yet to watch, coincidentally both dating from 1949 and directed by Raffaello Matarazzo and Riccardo Freda respectively (the latter title, unfortunately, only survives in a ragged print marked by a constant flurry of missing frames!).
In the end, Dante and Virgil come face to face with a gigantic Lucifer gleefully feasting on the bodies of Cassius and Brutus, chief conspirators in the assassination of Julius Caesar (which rather exposes a bias towards his own country's turbulent past in the poet's notion of Hell), but they are allowed to re-enter the real world..
L'Inferno was the first feature film released in Italy, beginning that country's long career of storied cinema.
An adaptation of the famous Inferno by Dante Alighieri, L'Inferno is not a horror film in the traditional sense.
It's almost impossible to find a copy anywhere.This, of course, is based on Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy"-particularly on the first third of that epic poem, "The Inferno" (which is my favorite part of the series).The film isn't as good as the book, I will say that for sure, but I feel as though it's the best adaptation we could ever get.
It works so well, to be so old, and I'm surprised more horror fans don't talk about this flick, or demand for a constant release of the flick in a twenty-movie collection box set from K-Mart.The actor playing Virgil (I believe was his name), whom leads Dante through hell, is absolutely fantastic, in his performance, taking notes of how portraits of the epic poem by Dante have looked, in the past.
It's a mix between a stage play and a typical film, at that time, which was common in the silent era, but it feels more prominent (and realistic), here.This is such a good flick.
There is some good costumes and special effects and that was like watching a Star Trek Classic but at the end, we are faraway of the power of words and art from Gustave Doré that inspired the movie..
Firstly of all this movie was made in 1911 then it was more daring movie of his time,showing Dante to a journey through inferno,the first ever adaptation from a Dante Alighieri's literally work,the movie took three years to be done and more giants stage was built to tell this magnificent story...Dante was lead by Virgil who goes to all circles of hell and in the way they found such famous characters of our past history....L'inferno show us many levels of suffering and how the different sinners are punished for their errant life....l really love this movie even with added of new score modern music..
Frequently classed as the first "blockbuster" of its time because of its large production budget, long runtime and higher-than-average ticket costs at the box office, L'Inferno adopts Dante's prose and brings its pages to life with some decent production values helping it along the way.
As far as adaptations go, the movie is fine and features a handful of impressive shots and sequences.
Despite the film's best intentions then, you're nevertheless left to watch a bunch of scantily-clad white people faff around for 80 minutes either getting burned to varying degrees or flailing around in some water for whatever reason while another white guy (Dante) has a day-trip through hell in order to feel good about himself by looking down on and deriding the "sinners".
L'inferno is a pretty early feature length film.
The movie takes Dante's portrait of hell and puts it on the screen in big fashion and it's not so much the story that matters but the images.
Dante is rightly revered in Italy and the mere mention of him or his works is enough to begin motion without actually turning on the machinery of the poetry.That's why this film was made, an odd thing if there ever was one.
This silent film work is one of the first ever known film adaptations and is based on Italian Dante's literary epic.
This film, as the title plainly indicate, is a dramatization of Dante's Inferno which comprises a third of his Divine Comedy.
As is well-known to all, the Inferno relates Dante's journey through Hell being guided by the Roman poet, Virgil.
Indeed, this movie uses Gustave Dore's illustrations of the Inferno as the basis of the cinematography.As for the film itself, its technical crudity and the highly uneven quality of the film stock, really make it mainly of archival value.
With the success of this film and other Italian feature films which followed like The Last Days of Pompeii and Cabiria, film makers like D.W. Griffith were inspired to direct long, involved films like Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.Unlike most other commentators, I wasn't too put off by the Tangerine Dream soundtrack.
I do look forward to seeing it, however, to note any additional footage that may exist here and for what seems, from advance reports, to be a very decent visual quality of the materials.I used to teach Italian to high school students and for many years I taught Dante's Inferno in translation, often acting out various episodes while donning horns and carrying a pitchfork.
The music I used to use in showing the movie was a CD recording of Franz Liszt's "Dante Symphony." It is about 50 minutes worth of music.
Surprisingly, and pleasingly, the drama of the symphonic piece, especially the first and second part (Inferno and Purgatorio), worked very well as an accompaniment.I have had a great deal of experience with this film, have seen it hundred of times, and I would certainly recommend that anyone showing or watching this DVD would turn off the sound and play this music instead.
Yes, it's important as an very early feature film that actually survives in something like its original form (the loss of much of a film t like The Kelly Gang is a tragedy) but L'inferno is pretty primitive.The story telling technique consists of an inter-title telling us what we're about to see, followed by a static shot showing it to us.
This silent-era underrated masterpiece was way too ahead of its time.Even when this film wasn't an entirely faithful adaptation of the epic poem written by Dante Aliegheri, I think that this is the only cinematic version that was able to capture with such magnificence all the horrors described by Dante about the Underworld realm, having a visual style highly influenced by the wonderful paintings done by Gustave Doré.Of course, there are some scenes that could be considered "dated" or "cheesy" for modern viewers, but personally, I think that the "ancient" look of this film gives it a solemn, timeless tone, that fits perfectly well with the source material, being in that one of the most incredible and ambitious samples of the early years of cinema.