AN “ INFERNO FILM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 985, 29 April 1911, Page 4

AN “ INFERNO FILM.

An extraordinary cinematographic picture ot Dante’s “ Inferno ” arrived in London last month. This film cost to produce, and required over 250 actors for its preparation. Nothing more horrible than this living picture ol the ghastly phases of the “Inferno” could be im agined. The first picture, which depicts the procession of the " lost souls,” is startling in its wealth of detail. A number of phantom figures with hopeless despair written on their laces are seen floating through the gates of the inferno. For a moment darkness intervenes, and then men with the lower part of their bodies embedded in pits of fire writhe and twist in pain until welcome darkness comes again. One after another the gruesome pictures conjuied up by Dante’s wonderful imagination pass before the eyes. Men and women are seen in the unsheltered desert, with the pitiless rain ot fire falling unceasingly on their bared flesh. The great snow plain follows. Its white surface is dotted with heads, which is all one sees of the human beings in their icy tomb. Altogether the exhibition lasts twenty minutes, and illustrates almost from beginning to end the story of Dante's visit to the inferno. The pictures were prepared in a great arena in Rome. The scene of the procession of souls was created by moving the camera, the only movement of the actors being a side swimming stroke, and in the burning pit picture the fire was caused by waving red paper above each pit and blowing smoke through a prepared floor.