Naples Archives - Page 2 of 2

Giuseppe de Liguoro, L’Inferno, 1911

March 4, 2014 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“The Italian epic came of age with Giuseppe de Liguoro’s imaginative silent version of the Inferno, loosely adapted from Dante and inspired by the illustrations of Gustave Doré. L’Inferno was first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante 10 March 1911. The film took over three years to make involving more than 150 people and was the first full length Italian feature film ever made. Its success was not confined to Italy it was an international hit taking more than $2 million in the United States alone.

“Tangerine Dream have composed the soundtrack based on their opera of Dante’s Inferno producing a soundtrack truly worthy of their position as one of the top film music composers in the world.” —L’Inferno film promotional site

Metro Station, University of Naples

April 24, 2011 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“On March 26, the 40,000 commuters of Naples, Italy, who pass daily through the University of Naples metro station found that virtually every surface had been transformed into a candy-colored kaleidoscope by the American designer Karim Rashid. . . . He printed wire-frame patterns on quartz flooring, applied portraits of Dante and Beatrice to the stairs and tiled the walls with words coined in the digital age.” [. . .] –Shonquis Moreno, The New York Times, April 20, 2011

Contributed by Hope Stockton (Bowdoin, ’07)

Francesco Bertolini, Giuseppe De Liguoro, and Adolfo Padovan, “L’Inferno” (1911)

December 5, 2008 By Professor Arielle Saiber

Watch YouTube video clips of Inferno (1911) and Satan Eating Human (1911).

“The Italian epic came of age with Giuseppe de Liguoro’s imaginative silent version of the Inferno, loosely adapted from Dante and inspired by the illustrations of Gustav Doré. L’Inferno was first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante 10 March 1911. The film took over three years to make involving more than 150 people and was the first full length Italian feature film ever made. It’s success was not confined to Italy it was an international hit taking more than $2 million in the United States alone.
Tangerine Dream have composed the soundtrack based on their opera of Dante’s Inferno producing a soundtrack truly worthy of their position as one of the top film music composers in the world.” —L’inferno.com

Contributed by J. Patrick Brown (Bowdoin, ’09)

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