L’Inferno (1911) e Dante’s Inferno (1924): due capolavori del muto e la loro fortuna

L’Inferno of Milano Films and the American Dante’s Inferno represent two masterpieces of silent cinema that tried the titanic task of translating into the big screen the visionary force of Dante’s Commedia. Both films are milestones in the history of cinema and had a powerful influence not only in the years of their distribution but also in subsequent cine- matography and other forms of artistic expression. Following modern and postmodern trends, many artists have been constantly reducing and dismembering these silent infernos to reuse ideas, emotions, or fragments more or less deformed in their utopic aspect until one day, the seventh art succeed in producing a movie which was truly at the same level as the Dantesque poem.