L'Inferno (1911)

Watching Silent Films

Dante is barred from entering the hill of salvation by three beasts that bar his path (Avarice, Pride and Lust). Beatrice descends from above and asks the poet Virgil to guide Dante through the Nine Circles of Hell. Virgil leads Dante to a cave where they find the river Acheron, over which Charon ferries the souls of the dead into Hell. They also see the three-headed Cerberus, and Geryon, a flying serpent with the face of a man. They see the Devil eating human beings whole, harpies eating the corpses of suicides, an evil man forced to carry his own severed head for eternity, people half buried in flaming lava, etc.

There follows a series of encounters in which the two meet up with a number of formerly famous historical figures whose souls were denied by both Heaven and Hell, and they listen to some of their tales told in flashback. These characters include Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucanus, Cleopatra, Dido, the Queen of Carthage, the traitor Caiphus, Count Ugalino, Peter of Vigna, Francesca Da Rimini and her lover Paulo, Brutus and Cassius, Mohammed and Helen of Troy. The main attraction of the film are the fantastic set designs depicting the horrors of Hell, with excessive violence and gore, designed to frighten the audience into becoming pious and God-fearing.

Copy we watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRUkyHvsvfg&feature=youtu.be

hosted by YiFeng, Lily, Bob.

Links referenced:
The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Purgatory, Complete by Dante Alighieri: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8795
Spark's Notes for The Divine Comedy: https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/inferno/
Aeneid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid
Bosch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights
Santa Claus (1898) - G.A. Smith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights
What Dreams May Come (1998): https://amzn.to/3dyjdmx

Recorded on February 25, 2020