Dante Movie - Inferno
There have been at least three movies, of varying quality and importance, based on Dante's Inferno
L'Inferno (1911)
The first movie, and most important of the three was movie adaptations is L'Inferno, an Italian silent film from 1911, directed by Francesco Bertolini, Giuseppe De Liguoro and Adolfo Padovanan. It was the first feature length movie produced in Italy.
L'Inferno was closely based on Dante's Inferno and the imagery of Gustave Dore's illustrations. It featured groundbreaking cinematography and lurid special effects that had never been seen before, such as an enormous Satan eating the bodies of the damned. The movie took three years to make and cost a prodigious 100,000 lire which at the time was a vast sum. However, it more than recouped its initial cost, thanks to the novelty of its special effects and some risqué elements such as male and female frontal nudity.
In addition to its surreal imagery and special effects, the movie broke new ground by adopting a new system of movie distribution based on leasing the film reels to movie theaters through regional distributors. This system was later adopted worldwide in the film industry.
The Inferno movie was later lost, as many other movies of the silent era, but was fortunately recovered. In 2002, L'Inferno was re-issued with a new soundtrack composed by Tangerine Dream. It remains an interesting movie not just for its historical significance but for its enduring artistic and entertainment value. The film can be viewed online on YouTube and at the Internet Archive. Below we present the entire full-length Dante Inferno Movie. Since this was a silent movie, converting it for English speaking audiences merely required splicing in new dialogue cards.
L'Inferno (1911 -- the Copycat)
The success of the original movie inspired a rival Italian film company to release another movie by the same name. This fake "Inferno" was also based on Dante's story, but featured lower quality special effects and acting. One thing it did have going for it was even more female nudity, which was intended to -- and succeeded -- in bringing people to the theatres. This version of the Inferno movie has been largely forgotten but it too broke new cinematic ground in its own way. It was the first of many copycat movies, aimed at cashing in on the buzz and publicity created by a more popular movie featuring basically the same plot and even a similar or identical title. This is a tradition that shamelessly continues in today's Hollywood.
Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic
This dark fantasy was an animated movie published in 2010. It went straight to DVD and was not released in theaters. The movie is only loosely based on Dante's Inferno, despite its name, and more closely follows the re-imagined storyline created for the Inferno Video Game for the Xbox and PlayStation game platforms. In the movie, as in the video game, the hero Dante is a soldier who served in the Crusades, where he committed war crimes. He left behind in Italy his beloved fiancé Beatrice whom he hopes to marry upon his return from the war. However, his hopes are dashed when Beatrice is murdered, and her soul is carried off to Hell by Satan. Armed with a magic sword and other holy weapons, Dante descends into the Inferno to find and rescue Beatrice. In this version Dante is no pilgrim but rather a warrior hacking his way past demons and infernal creatures to get to his Beatrice. In this movie, all pretense at allegory or religious meaning is abandoned in favor of turning the story into an action adventure. In fact, each circle of hell is treated as a sort of video game level complete with a boss at each stage which Dante must defeat.
Strangely, despite the vivid imagery and fruitful storyline that Dante's Inferno could provide to film makers, especially with today's special effects, there have not been any other movies expressly based on Dante's epic poem. However, many of the images and concepts from Dante have found their way into popular culture and even though there have not been any other movies expressly based on Dante, many movies have incorporated some of his concepts and ideas. And so even though no has yet made a modern movie masterpiece out of the Inferno, we can see traces of it in movies such as Spawn and even Keanu Reeves' Constantine.
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The first full length feature film produced in Italy was the 1911 movie L'inferno. This silent film took three years to make and featured special effects which were very advanced for the time. Much of the imagery is inspired by the drawings of Gustave Dore.
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