A Criminally Overlooked Masterpiece - 1911 - L'Inferno - Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan & Giuseppe de Liguoro

L’Inferno is one of the most ambitious films ever made. It was the first ever Italian feature film, took over three years to make, involved a cast of over 150 people and required the work of three separate directors. Some of these statistics may not sound impressive today, but at the time it marked a quantum leap in terms of scale and aspiration.

One of this blog’s goals has been to find key films between the making of The Great Train Robbery and The Birth of A Nation and prove that a whole decade of great cinema has been woefully overlooked. We have looked at many strong examples so far, but few can smash the myth that nothing consequential happened in cinema between 1903 and 1915 like L’Inferno.

I have read reviews lamenting the fact that the film pre-dates Griffith’s pioneering of the close up and that the camera remains static for the majority of the film. But I suspect film historians have overemphasised early silent cinema’s technical innovations over its imagistic brilliance. For there are four or five scenes in this film which are as breathtaking as any I have encountered in cinema.

The Lumiere Brothers held up a mirror to our lives, Méliès took us to the moon, Porter took us to the Wild West, Blackton pioneered animation; these three Italian directors take us to Hell. And given that it is five years before the brutalities of the Somme and mustard gas, given that it was made in the century which included the brutalities of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, The Great Terror, My Lai and much more – film’s first (and most successful) portrayal of Hell is of significant importance.

Furthermore, it is clear the broad influence the film has had on subsequent cinematic work - from Pasolini to Romero. The film was also successful when it was released – taking $2 million in the US alone (When this figure is adjusted for inflation it comes to just over $45 million. A remarkable figure when one considers that cinema was still a fledgling concept). Not that a film’s financial success can be equated with its aesthetic quality, but what today might be considered an ‘art house’ film was once a genuine ‘blockbuster’. 

There is one major caveat. The film was restored relatively recently; producer Tim Pierce painstakingly put together the most complete version of the film from archival footage. The team behind the restoration decided to allow Tangerine Dream to score the film – and it is a contender for the most inappropriate soundtrack ever recorded. I think Tangerine Dream have made some compelling music (Zeit is a spellbinding album) but this score is awful. It often undercuts key visuals with unnecessarily melodramatic sounds, but worst of all is a vocalist who murders some of the most visually striking scenes with absurdly reductive lyrics. I recommend watching the film a completely different piece of music (Could someone recommend the ideal piece of music to accompany the film?). 

L’Inferno is not the first cinematic adaptation of a literary text but is certainly the most successful thus far. 1910 adaptations of King Lear and Frankenstein successfully channelled their source material to allow the works to adhere to the limited time span of the one-reeler. But with L’Inferno, the three directors are able to tackle their source material without having to remove the majority of the original framework. But L’Inferno does not simply tackle Dante’s masterful work piece by piece; it provides it with a new setting which illuminates several key moments.

The film’s opening scenes do not hint at its imminent visual delights. The film is at its weakest when it portraying animals and beasts (the leopard and Cerberus both look tacky - see Cerebrus below) as Dante and Virgil wanders around a mountain.

But as they approach the River Acheron, the film’s anarchic visual aesthetic becomes clearer. Scores of naked bodies attempt to board Charon’s ferry as he beats them off with his oar (see image below). There is no precedent for such a scene in cinema pre-1911; you can have all the Griffithian close-ups you want, but the immediacy with which these images embed themselves on your subconscious is striking.

It is also important to draw attention to the scale and horror of the imagery as it distinguishes the film from being a vision of Hell through the borrowed vision of Georges Méliès. For the film uses plenty of Mélièsian trickery and is littered with references and homage to Méliès; particularly when we see the face of the devil. But where Méliès worked with no more than four or five actors, these Italian directors are happy to fill the lens with human bodies (the power of the scene where Dante and Virgil stand over the group of flatterers showering in the river of filth is partly due to sheer number of flatterers bathing in excrement - see image below). 

This also demonstrates that the three directors embraced the comic savagery of Dante’s vision of Hell. Hence the face of the devil also contains the bodies of Cassius and Brutus trying to kick free – this is the imagery of comic apocalyptic nightmares.

L’Inferno also introduces a key narrative tool: the flashback. While we have seen historic films such La Presa Di Roma and Nerone skip between passages of time – L’Inferno ‘flashes back’ to a character’s life before they entered Hell and then returns to their terrible surroundings. 

The device is employed on three separate occasions and is at its most brutally effective when flashing back to the life of Count Ugolino (see images below). When Dante and Virgil encounter Ugolino, he is gnawing away at the brain of Archbishop Ruggieri. Count Ugolino then recounts the tale of him and his family’s starvation by the Archbishop, as we see his children dead on the floor as he is dizzied from hunger. As the image returns to his soul in Hell, the contrast could not be more striking as the ‘reality’ of this inception of Hell becomes apparent.

L’Inferno has every right to be acclaimed as one of the most important and influential films ever made – yet it languishes in cinematic purgatory as an afterthought to the oeuvre of Griffith. Yet as the balls of fire reign down on the blasphemers (see image below) and we have a scene so ahead of its time with its allusions to the great film on war, it becomes crystal clear that L’Inferno is a film of superlative quality that demands immediate insertion into the cinematic canon.      

The first cinematic Roman Tragedy - 1909 - Nerone - Luigi Maggi

...The silent historical or costume film ultimately marked the high-water mark of Italian production and its success abroad in foreign markets. Interest in literary or historical topics helped to create the need for the artistic director, in addition to the cameraman and the producer, whose task was to coordinate the necessary research, the construction of sets and costumes, and the increasingly central role of the often temperamental actor and actresses whose popularity would soon surpass that of the man or woman in the street of the early documentary short film. Increasingly complex plots, taken either from history or from the Italian literary classics, also required the services of another technician, the scriptwriter even though films were yet to speak.

As Film: Ab Initio continues to progress through film's rich history, one of the most interesting conclusions that we can draw about the growth of the film industry is the strange paradox of separate countries producing wholly distinctive films that nevertheless produced certain roles and developments that influenced film makers across the globe. 

Within seconds, Nerone can be identified as an Italian film, yet the crucial developments that such Italian films made in regards to creating the positions of artistic director, producer and script writer, as mentioned in the above quote (from Peter Bondanella’s indispensable book A History Of Italian Cinema) will become a permanent feature for all filmmakers.

The role of artistic director is particularly interesting, as although you may have equivalents to script directors and producers in regards to plays, the role of the artistic director is somewhat unique to cinema (theatre has stage managers, but a play will only have a limited amount of sets and is limited to the stage). The physical setting of Nerone is most impressive and marks a significant step up from those found in the first Italian film, La Presa Di Roma . Whereas the film involved events that took place only decades ago, Nerone’s events take place towards the end of the Emperor Nero’s reign. The sets are therefore more elaborate, with more attention paid to detail.

Perhaps the mediocre quality of the print aids Nerone’s feeling of authenticity, as the sets and costumes are far more ‘believable’ than in any film we have seen so far on the Film: Ab Initio list. For example, the scene where Nero parades Poppea to the Roman public is a spectacular set piece. Here we have some film’s first extras dressed up as Roman citizens welcoming their new Empress. The synchronicity with which they part and then greet the royal couple hints at similar set-pieces that we will see in later films.

The tone of Nerone is different to any film that we have observed so far, it is the first tragedy that we have encountered. I would suggest that this is because it is the hardest genre to convey in the limited period of time that film makers had in the first decade of the 20^th century. 

Whereas comedy lends itself rather well to the time-scale that the early silent period offered, it is far more difficult to develop sufficient pathos in a story in the twelve minutes of a film like Nerone to enable your audience to be taken by the tragic nature of that particular film.

Hence choosing a well-known historical event is a shrewd move; most audiences would be aware of the story and would have known any missing details the films could not cover as well as already have an emotional investment in the characters.  

Therefore it is a great shame that the actor who plays Nero himself (see picture above) completely overacts the part; the most impressive thing about his performance is his facial hair. The calm, regal atmosphere the film exudes in its opening scene is dampened by Nero’s overtly eager physical gestures and posturing. The actress who plays Octavia on the other hand, is rather impressive. She manages to convey a diverse range of emotions in a short period of time before she is murdered; moving from shock to authority to philosophical resignation within a span of five seconds.

The most imaginative moment of the film comes towards the denouement of the film, as we see Nero lying on a chair, with his imaginative thoughts unfolding in the background; a pastoral scene gives way to what appears to be Rome on fire, causing Nero to collapse in fear of his own thoughts.

It is as powerful a scene as we have witnessed in any film so far, and makes great use of the medium of film to explore the apocalyptic visions the film’s protagonist. 

1905 - La Presa Di Roma (The Taking of Rome) - Filoteo Alberini

This film is worth remembering for a number of reasons. It marked a major step forward from the brief short film designed to entertain audiences during intermissions of musical concerts or theatrical productions towards the longer, more complex feature film. The film’s subject, the breaching of the Porta Pia by Italian troops in 1870, resulting in the annexation of Rome to the fledgling unified Italian state, connects the Italian Risorgimento, the national drive to independence and the formation of a single Italian nation throughout the peninsula. (Italian cinema would continue to play a civic function in society, especially during the neorealist period and afterward.) The Taking of Rome also set the stage for the rise of what would eventually become Italy’s most successful silent film genre: the historical epic.

The above is Peter Bondanella’s description of La Presa di Roma from his excellent book A History of Italian Cinema (a reading list post is in the pipeline...). It makes clear the importance of Filoteo Alberini’s film. Alberini was the Italian equivalent of the Lumiere Brothers; on 11 November 1895 he applied for a patent for his device, the Alberini Kinetograph.

La Presa Di Roma is a film which requires a certain amount of background reading. I always attempt to watch a film ‘blind’ first, i.e. without reading any information on it so that I do not enter the viewing of the film with any preconceptions, but on this occasion I was at a complete loss as to the events of the film, which was compounded by the fact that a couple of the scenes of the movie have been lost.

Bondanella refers to the breaching of the Porta Pia by Italian troops, which was the final act of the Second Italian War of Independence and lead to the unification of the Italian state. The events of the film sees the General of the Italian Army escorted under blindfold from Ponte Milvio to the General of the Papal Army, where the latter General issues an ultimatum to the General of the Papal Army to surrender. The ultimatum is refused, and the final scene of the film sees the Italian troops breach through the wall of the Porta Pia.

This scene provides us with our first ‘battle’ scene; there is no Méliès esque  visual trickery on show but it is not needed, the image of the soldiers storming through the wall is compelling but also prophetic of the century’s coming events.

When we think of the origins of political cinema, we tend to think of the likes of Eisenstein and Riefenstahl. Yet this film predates not only those directors, but also the First World War and its recriminations. La Presa Di Roma, depicting a key moment in Italy’s recent history, was produced in co-operation with the Italian Ministry of War. This makes clear that as early as 1905, governments were aware of the potential power of the moving image.

Much is made of the audience’s immediate reactions to The Great Train Robbery and L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat, but it would be of greater interest to learn what effect La Presa Di Roma had on its contemporary audience and their feelings of national pride. It would be extremely useful to uncover accounts of these reactions as I think it is hard for a modern viewer to measure the effect viewing a key historic moment would have had on the contemporary audience.

The influence of the Lumiere Brothers and Méliès is not visible in La Presa Di Roma. The film is distinctively Italian and the visual language is of a different nature to what we have seen in other films. For example, the lavish, opulent set of the scene (see below) where the blindfolded general is brought to the Papal Army’s general will become typical of Italian films of the next decade. The hand gestures and movement of the two generals is of a unique nature and emphasised the Italian inflections of the film.

La Presa di Roma is an incredibly important film that requires far more academic and general interest. A film requiring as much context as La Presa Di Roma does needs more information about the contemporary audience response was as well as to what extent the Italian Ministry of War influenced the film’s direction. If you are interested in either political or Italian cinema it is a must see film.