L'Inferno (1911), directed by Francesco Bertolini and Adolfo Padovan. Dante’s visit to Hell guided by Virgil gets the filmic treatment here inspired by the 19^th-century illustrations by Gustave Dore. The sets and costumes and designs are, mostly, eye-popping. As Dante descends deeper into Hell, he moves from circle to circle seeing more and more torment and anguish until he finally confronts Lucifer himself who is calmly but hungrily munching away on the body of a human reminding meow that well-known Goya work. At times, such spectacle works and works very well, at other times it falls flat as in the rushing in the a she-wolf played by a quite perky German Shepard. Although visually striking, the vision of a field of torsos imbedded in fire, legs flailing above ground, is amusing rather than terrifying, at least for modern viewers. I daresay viewers in 1911 would have found these images more terrifying than we might. The film tries to give us a sense of a journey, as we watch Dante and Virgil walk hither and yon, but mostly what we have is a series of tableaux, some imaginatively intricate and beautiful.  

Don’t Change Your Husband (1919), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille is best known as a director of big films, epics with that cast of thousands such as The Ten Commandments (twice), King of Kings, Cleopatra, Samson and Delilah, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Crusades, and so on. Here, however, he gives us a domestic comedy. The plot turns on infidelity and divorce, sensitive topics at the time. Young wife Leila (Gloria Swanson) is bored with her unromantic and rather slovenly husband, James Porter (Elliott Dexter). He dresses shabbily, drops cigar ash on the carpet, and insists on eating raw onions. He also makes a lot of money. His friend, slimy Schulyler Van Sutphen (Lew Cody) is out to seduce Leila. He succeeds. She leaves James, marries Schulyler, and discovers the second husband is worth than the first. He is a Lothario of the first degree. This is DeMille, after all, and the film boasts an elaborate fantasy sequence in which Leila imagines a quite different life than the one she has. The goings-on are froth and quite fun. The costumes are elaborate and baroque. Oh, those headpieces. The film offers a pleasant way to spend 70 minutes or so.