France Archives - Page 4 of 8

The Dante Trap by Arnaud Delalande (2011)

April 28, 2018 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“Murder follows murder, each more gruesome than the last, and as Viravolta begins to draw the connections between these deaths, and the torments reserved for sinners in each of Dante’s circles of hell, he finds himself embroiled in a terrible game of cat and mouse. As the streets of Venice fill with masked Carnival-goers, and as Anna and Viravolta are once again thrown together, he is drawn further into the inferno, to the heart of a secret sect and a plot to bring about the downfall of the city.” —Orion Books

Contributed by Alessandra Mazzocchi (Florida State University ’19)

“Encore Dante” (2016 – ), A modern day adaptation of Dante’s Inferno

January 18, 2017 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“In her youth, the author labored as an au pair for a Parisian family. Like most life-altering experiences, the work was brief but intense. Now, after decades of therapy, the author descends again to the depths of hell to describe for readers what awaits there.”

Anticipated schedule for posting chapters of Encore Dante:

Prologue: Posted
Chapter 1: Week of February 6, 2017
Chapter 2: Week of February 20, 2017
Chapter 3: Week of March 6, 2017
Chapter 4: Week of March 20, 2017
Chapter 5: Week of April 3, 2017
Chapter 6: Week of April 17, 2017
Chapter 7: Week of May 1, 2017
Chapter 8: Week of May 15, 2017
Chapter 9: Week of May 29, 2017
Chapter 10: Week of June 12, 2017
Epilogue: Week of June 26, 2017

As Above, So Below (2014)

May 14, 2015 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

The thriller film As Above, So Below features a journey to the catacombs below Paris – and a Dantesque passage.

The wall above the entry to this passage reads, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Contributed by Erik Anderson, Hargrave Military Academy ’15

Le Cabaret de L’Enfer: Turn-of-the-Century Paris Nightclub Modeled After Hell

July 9, 2014 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“As a general rule, theme bars are embarrassing affairs. You have your corny waitstaff, your overly literal decor and a sense of forced performance that’s… annoying. Once in a blue moon though, there has been a theme bar so fucking cool you would sell your soul to get in. Tragically, you would have to strike some kind of deal with the devil to go to Le Cabaret de L’Enfer, since the Paris red light district nightclub opened around the turn of the last century and closed sometime during the middle of it. Very little information exists on L’Enfer, but the detail in the decor is absolutely gorgeous—almost Boschian detail of twisting human, animal and skeletal forms—couldn’t you just die?” –Posted by Amber Frost on Dangerous Minds

Lost River (2014)

May 22, 2014 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“Lost River has been heavily influenced aesthetically by the work of Nicolas Winding Refn, Gosling’s favoured collaborator and director of Drive and Only God Forgives. It looks like something out of a style magazine with its heavy green and red tints.

“But for all the brilliance of the work of its cinematographer Benoit Debie (who shot Irreversible), the fact that the action is set in Detroit, the American city once famous for its cars but now celebrated for its abandoned buildings, seems at odds with Gosling’s criticism of America and its willingness to abandon its past and its people. It occasionally feels as though he is glamorising their misery.

“Recurring burning buildings, and even the occasional burning bicycle, establish Detroit as a place of purgatory and it’s on some lower level of Dante’s Inferno that Gosling has found his characters, the type usually found in the films of Dario Argento, Gaspar Noe and Nic Roeg.” –Kaleem Aftab, “Lost River, Cannes film review: ‘Dazzling enough to delight Ryan Gosling fans’,” The Independent, May 20, 2014

The still featured above recalls the iconic entrance to Le Cabaret de L’Enfer, the hell-themed turn-of-the-century Parisian nightclub featured on Dante Today here.

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