Two Different Paths to Dante's Inferno
by John Aquino on 07/08/14
I recently had the opportunity to explore two paths to Dante's Inferno: Dan Brown's novel Inferno and the 1935 Fox film Dante's Inferno.
As to Dan Brown, I read his The Da Vinci Code. I found it a good read,but it seemed very familiar. Later, I covered the lawsuit in UK court, Baigent v. Random House, in which Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh argued that Brown has infringed their copyright in their nonfiction book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by wrapping a novel around their thesis. Under the copyright laws of most countries, it is not possible to copyright ideas, only expressions. Brown and his publisher responded that Baignent and Leigh were claiming copyright on a plot idea.
Now in UK case law, there was precedent for this type of litigation. In 1967, the noted British playwright John Osborne, who had successfully collaborated with the director Tony Richardson on the 1963 film Tom Jones, was asked to write the screenplay for the Richardson's film The Charge of the Light Brigade. Since Osborne said he knew nothing about the Crimean War, he took a nonfiction book about the war, propped it up on his desk, and wrote the screenplay, giving dialogue to historical characters, creating fictional characters to convey an historical moment as described in the book. The film was sued for copyright infringement by the nonfiction book's publisher, and the UK court indicated that such structural similarities from book to book could form a case for copyright infringement. Osborne's screenplay was discarded as part of the settlement.
But in the case of the Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the scope of the latter was so vast that it was difficult to pinpoint substantial similarity. The court dismissed the case and awarded attorneys fees to Brown and his publisher.
But I still think the Da Vinci Code is derivative.
As to his earlier book, Angels and Demons, which shares the same hero, Professor Robert Langdon, with the Da Vinci Code, I was doing contract lawyer work for a law firm, basically reviewing on a PC documents that had been compiled for discovery to determine what was privileged and what was not. Another attorney said he had been listening to Angels and Demons on his PC and asked if I wanted to listen to the CD. Again, it held my interest, but after a while, I was gagging on dialogue like, "Oh my God, they have stolen the secret of antimatter."
I did not read or hear his next novel The Lost Symbols which deals with Masonic symbols that have been scattered about as clues related to our founding father. My wife gave me Inferno because of my interest in Dante's The Divine Comedy, and I took advantage of the long flying time and read it on the way to a conference in San Diego and back.
Read It and Gave It Away. Like the Da Vinci Code, Inferno is a page turner. But interestingly enough, it appeared to be only peripherally about Dante's Inferno. It doesn't explore the text of Dante's Inferno for clues or really anything. The villain, who was planning to address overpopulation by sending a virus to winnow it down much as the plague did in Dante's time, alludes to the Inferno but he doctors a Botticelli etching showing the Inferno to give clues and rewrites passages from Dante to use as clues, to make it easier for himself and Brown, I guess. So there's no involvement with Dante's book, just the idea of it.
The overwriting of Angels and Demons is still present. There is a sense of padding in the book. One chapter will end indicating that Langdon must fly to another location pursuing clues, and the next chapter begins with a guide book description of that place. Langdon is running for his life and will stop, at least in his mind, to say that he hates a piece of sculpture he is passing. And there are red herrings galore, the type that once you see you've been misled you don't admire the diversion but smack your forehead to convey how silly and pointless the red herring was.
It does suggest that the structure of Holy Blood, Holy Grail was a real benefit to the Da Vinci Code.
But it is a page turner, and I finished it over seven hours of flying. I closed the book on the flight home with three hours to go and knowing that I was going to have to carry the hardcover book with me until I got home and could place it in the carboard box to go to the second-hand bookstore since I had no plans to look at it again. The lady sitting next to me asked if it was any good. I said it was a page turner. She responded that she had read all of Dan Brown's books but that one. "Would you like to have this?", I asked, handing it to her. She took it eagerly and turned to her husband, saying excitedly, "Look what he gave me!"
The husband thanked me and asked, "Does Dante have nine circles of hell?" "Yes," I answered. "Does he," meaning Brown, "give you nine circles of hell?" "Yes," I answered," but he really doesn't because, as noted, he doesn't get into the text of the Inferno.
The lady started reading at once and by the time we landed three hours later she was up to page 100.
So Brown has found an audience but seems trapped with the trick of having to make old stories new.
The Movie. A few days after I returned, I flipped the television on and saw that the 1935 Fox movie Dante's Inferno was on the Fox Movie Channel. Celestial serendipity? It seemed to have a lot more to do with Dante than Brown's book.
It was Spencer Tracy's last film at Fox before he went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where he stayed for 20 years. If the film is remembered at all, it is for a dance sequence toward the end with Rita Cansino, then 16 years old and before she was renamed Rita Hayworth. It was directed by Henry Lachman, whose later films were mostly programmer movies such as entries in the Charlie Chan series. It was written by Philip Klein, who died the year the movie was made, and Robert Yost, whose first screenplay this was and who went on to write mostly westerns. Among five uncredited writers were Rose Franken, who wrote the play Claudia about a young bride that was made into a movie starring Dorothy McGuire; Lester Cole, who went on to write the scripts for several good action movies including Blood on the Sun (1945) with Jimmy Cagney and Objective Burma! (1945) with Errol Flynn, was blacklisted for his alleged communist leanings as one of the "Hollywood Ten" and went to prison, and in 1966 wrote the script under an assumed name for the lion movie Born Free; and Lou Breslow, who went on to write screenplays for Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and even the 1965 television series My Mother the Car.
It was, in short, a movie put together by a contract director and mostly contract writers. But it is big budget, the script is literate and engaging, and the acting good. In many ways, it prefigures Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) with its innovative camera angles, its portrayal of a man of promise who sells his soul for success, and its using as inspiration real life incidents such as the 1911 fire at the Dreamland portion of Coney Island and the 1934 fire on the ship the Morro Castle that killed 137 people.
It's about a carnival barker named Jim Carter who latches onto a man named Pop McWade who has a sideshow on Dante's Inferno. Jim later marries Pop's daughter played by a very young Claire Trevor. Pop wants to bring Dante to the masses, while Jim sees only the opportunity to entice both customers who want to be scared and those who want to oggle pretty girls making believe they are Cleopatra and Salome in hell. Jim becomes a multimillion by cutting corners, doublecrossing people, lying, bribing, in other words by committing the sins from Dante's Inferno. When Pop is injured because of Jim's refusal to fix safety hazards, Pop, in the hospital, tells Jim the story of the Inferno and Jim has a vision that spans eight minutes of film time with no dialogue in which he and the camera descend into hell, moving passed writhing naked men and women who are tortured by flames.
Reportedly, 5,000 technicians, artists and other crew and 3,000 extras worked on this sequence. It is unique.
This is a film that, like Pop wanted, brings Dante to a larger audience. It uses the Dante background imaginatively, and my wife said she could image someone teaching Dante showing at least some of this film, while you couldn't use Brown.
Copyright 2014 by John T. Aquino
