Francesco Bertolini - L'Inferno (1911)

L'Inferno (1911)

Italian/Silent/B&W

Directed by:

Francesco Bertolini,Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro

Cinematography by: 

Emilio Roncarolo

Cast:

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

Virgil guides the poet Dante through the circles of Inferno to reach salvation in Paradise. During his journey, Dante meets other sinners being punished by their transgressions. 

In the penultimate scene, as Virgil leads Dante through the subterranean passage, he suffers an uncharacteristic moment of clumsiness (he trips, stumbles, and has to pull his own toga out from under his foot).

This is the first feature film to be shown in its entirety, in one screening, in the USA. Prior to this it was thought audiences wouldn't be prepared to sit for over an hour to watch a feature - films such as Les Misérables (1909) and The Life of Moses (1909) were shown in episodic parts over the course of a month or two.

L'Inferno is a 1911 Italian silent film, loosely adapted from Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy. L'Inferno took over three years to make, and was the first full-length Italian feature film ever made. L'Inferno was first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante on March 10, 1911. An international success, it took in more than $2 million in the United States alone, where its length gave theatre owners there an excuse for raising ticket prices.For this reason, L'Inferno was arguably the first true blockbuster in all of cinema. Today it is regarded by many scholars and fans as the finest film adaptation of any of Dante's works to date.

The film's depictions of Hell closely followed those in the engravings of Gustave Doré for an edition of The Divine Comedy, which were familiar to an international audience, and employed several special effects.

The first music score for the film was written by Raffaele Caravaglios. The film was released on DVD in 2004, with a score by Tangerine Dream. 

Another DVD, based on a version restored by Cineteca di Bologna in 2006, was published in 2011 with an original soundtrack by Edison Studio in Cinema Ritrovato collection.

As Dante's The Divine Comedy places Muhammad in hell, and following the depictions in engravings of Gustave Doré, the film also has a momentary unflattering depiction of Muhammad in its Hell sequence. This would make L'Inferno one of the few films to include such a depiction.

Nancy Mitford recorded seeing the film in Italy in 1922, referring to it as Dante. She records that it lasted from 9 until 12:15 including two intermissions. She details many of the deaths and tortures from the film. Her description of the film in her letter home is quoted in the biography Nancy Mitford by Harold Acton.

The scenes from Hell from the film were reused in an American 1936 exploitation film Hell-O-Vision and the 1944 race film Go Down, Death! Some American state film censor boards required removal of the hell sequences from L'Inferno used in Go Down, Death! such as one where a woman's bare breast is momentarily seen.

Live score by Mike Kiker

Score by Botanical Fortress