Dante's Inferno

1924 DramaHorror 60 minutes Directed by Henry Otto

This film is not available to watch here yet.

About Dante's Inferno

Slumlord Mortimer Judd ruins Eugene Craig and mistreats his own sick wife. A copy of Dante's Inferno arrives. In a dream Judd is tried for murder, executed, and dragged through Hell, where sinners burn in tar and suicides stand as trees. He wakes in time to stop Craig from killing himself.

Cast & crew

More about Dante's Inferno

Henry Otto directed. Edmund Goulding wrote the screenplay from a story by Cyrus Wood, using Dante's Inferno and plot turns from A Christmas Carol. William Fox produced it. Fox released it on September 7, 1924. Running time 60 minutes. Wikipedia lists the budget as $102,000 and the box office as $514,000. Joseph August photographed it. Ralph Lewis is Judd. Pauline Starke is the nurse Marjorie Vernon. Josef Swickard is Eugene Craig. Gloria Grey is Mildred Craig. William Scott is Ernest Judd. Lawson Butt is Dante. Howard Gaye is Virgil.

Themes

  • A miser given a tour of Hell
  • Suicide threatened and stopped
  • Dante's poem as a dream
  • Mortimer Judd
  • Eugene Craig
  • Inferno
  • Hell
  • Fox

Making

The Hell passage is staged as Judd's nightmare, not as a trial that really executes him.

Look

Joseph August shot the modern story and the Hell sets. Some release prints tinted those scenes red.

Preservation

UCLA Film and Television Archive holds an incomplete print, three reels of five. A print is also reported at the Museum of Modern Art.

Notes

  • Some original prints tinted the Hell scenes red.
  • Bud Jamison plays the butler, uncredited, in blackface. Noble Johnson, uncredited, is a devil with a lash.
  • Fox reused some of the Hell footage in the 1935 Dante's Inferno with Spencer Tracy.
  • Italy had already filmed the poem in 1911 as L'Inferno.
  • UCLA holds three reels of a five-reel film. A print is also reported at the Museum of Modern Art.

Scenes

  • An angel parts a legion of demons so Dante can pass.
  • Sinners burn in boiling tar.
  • Judd wakes and stops Craig's suicide.

Influenced by

  • Dante Alighieri's Inferno
  • Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol

Influenced

  • Dante's Inferno (1935)

Also available

  • UCLA Film and Television Archive (incomplete print)
  • Museum of Modern Art (print reported)