Customer Reviews

Dante's Inferno [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Before Ken Russell became KEN RUSSELL and before Oliver Reed became a legend, they combined their talents to create this stunning bio of Rosetti. Reed broods his way through, merging menace with vulnerability, the only actor ever able to carry both off at the same time. Russell is fairly restrained in his direction, as this is long before he peaked in the Seventies. As usual, when you get these two giant talents together, the end result is a very unique product.

I saw this movie back in the 1970's and since then I have been a huge admirer of Dante Gabriel Rosetti (both his painting and poetry). I have always been a fan of Oliver Reed as well. I remember being completely riveted by his performance. I'd forgotten that it was a Ken Russell movie though. I wish that this movie would be released on DVD.

Reminiscing about their encounters in late Victorian and Edwardian London with survivors of the original Pre-Raphaelite movement, Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell observed that these artists and writers even in their later years were lively company, and they lamented that their "official" biographers had transformed them into a bunch of prigs. While much can be said against this Ken Russell "docudrama," he undeniably asserts the periodic flamboyance - ascending at times to zaniness - of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and some of his Pre-Raphaelite cohorts. It's fun to see a youthful Rossetti (Oliver Reed) and Lizzie Siddal (played by look-alike Judith Paris) horsing around on the beach as they elude the censure of their patron John Ruskin, or Rossetti in still higher spirits with his mistress Fanny Cornforth and with Holman Hunt's erstwhile fiancée, Annie Miller. Some of the voiceover quotes from Rossetti's poetry are well selected, and the merging of verse and image in later scenes achieves real poignancy. These virtues are worth stressing in a production apparently budgeted at 5 or 6 quid, and saturated with the flagrant disregard of inconvenient fact that became a Ken Russell trademark. E.g., Rossetti pictures of the 1870s are proudly displayed in his 1850s studio at Blackfriars Bridge, and as knowledge of the Pre-Raphaelites and their work has increased, such anachronisms will alienate some viewers as much as Russell's dismissive caricatures of the likes of Holman Hunt and William Michael Rossetti. John Ruskin is given quite a bit of screen time, but he is a schoolmarmish pedant -- not the Ruskin who championed Rossetti and paved his way to financial independence. Christina Rossetti fares better - save for being saddled with an Italian accent, while her brothers have none! There is a solid portrayal of William Morris by a future parliamentarian, Andrew Faulds, and an effete Swinburne contributed by a fellow poet, Christopher Logue. Oliver Reed, whose appearance changes relatively little as Rossetti ages, does not look like the poet-painter in early manhood, but he does capture something of his presence around the age of 36 - the age, incidentally, when Rossetti posed for his final photographs. Reed achieves in fact as insightful a portrait as he can manage, surrounded as he is by "infernal" effects that dominate the last part of the film. Attempting to approximate hallucinations induced - or at least intensified - by Rossetti's mounting addiction to chloral, Russell portrays Elizabeth Siddal ascending out of her coffin with vampiric regularity. After the generally sympathetic portrayal of Rossetti and the living Elizabeth, this descent into Hammer horror is regrettable. Despite a game cast and some engaging sprints of fancy, this effort must reside among the "might-have-beens" of successful docudrama.

This is a typical Ken Russell film with mystical and symbolic references. Rather off beat if you are not familiar with his style. I looked for years for my copy of this early 70's (I believe) film and finally was able to locate one. It is for a very select audience and will not attract those who are not used to Mr. Russell's films. I love the film and was most pleased to find my copy.

I loved this film when I first saw it in a college English class. I can not believe some supposed English teacher accidently bought this film not understanding that it was not the more famous half of Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy, and that Dante Gabriel Rosetti (and his sister Christine) were poets, only that Dante was some sort of "painter." Surprising about Dante the painter, since the PreRaphaelites have not gotten much modern recognition because their work is somewhat dismissed as illustrative, although their connection with the Arts and Crafts movement does turn up among antique collectors and restorers. This film lays bare a very personal hell Rosetti certainly went through when dealing with his demons and regrets, while engaging the viewer in the bohemian melieu of 19th Century Victorian society. It's filled with insights and symbolism handled in a creative and engaging way rarely seen in today's films. With so much crap being turned out on DVD, why isn't this excellent film been made available? BTW, if you do see this film and like it, you might also like the French Lieutant's Woman which IS out on DVD. Not quite the masterpiece Dante's Inferno is, this film also explores the repressed passions of Victorian life, via an interesting dual fictional and modern comparison.

The visual atmosphere of this romp exudes a vaporous fidelity to the prb, with its beautiful fog of dream, hope, exuberant spirit-flesh, glorious rebellion, the steamy woods and swirling streams, the love of embodied word and light. After all, truth to nature was their motto. However, truth to history and the lives of real people -- well, no. Abandon all that, ye who enter here. Celebrity wraps its victims in rumor, often unkind and most untrue, and what this work superscribes in my heart, Mr. Russell, is but one word: unforgivable.

I thought I was purchasing a video about Dante's Inferno from the Divine Comedy. This is not it! This is a video about Dante Rosetti the painter! The video looks like a Charlie Chaplin copy with sound. I am a teacher, and I just wasted my money.