Substantially Similar--A Blog on IP Issues, Writing and Film
The Power of Movies and Images, Such as The Maltese Falcon
by John Aquino on 10/14/14
I have always loved films. I'm not obsessed with them. I believe film is an art form. I take it seriously. But I primarily enjoy it for its entertainment value.
When people ask me what my favorite film is, I shrug because I know what they are expecting. I admire Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, Frederico Fellini's La Strada and Il Bidone and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. But for my tastes they are not for casual viewing. If' I'm flipping through the channels and Casablanca, The Magnificent Seven or The Guns of Navarone is on, even if it's half way through, I can drip in and enjoy.
There is admittedly a duality here. I most enjoy the entertainment value of films, but I also take them seriously. I am in awe sometimes at the way movies come together--the script, the performances, the cinematography, the set design, the music score that it is usually not written until the shooting is done.
I remember a number of years ago I was editor of a music publication and had worked with one of the editors of the Saturday Review on a collaborative article. A few months later, I read a review in the magazine of the Barbara Streisand remake of A Star is Born. The reviewer wrote that the original 1937 movie had been based on the life and death of John Gilbert who actually did die by walking into the sea. I wrote the editor personally and stated that Gilbert had not committed suicide by walking into the sea, that the incident was based on the death of a lesser known actor, John Bowers. The editor wrote me and said, "Okay, we'll give the write a demerit for making a mistake about a moooovie!"
He obviously did not take movies seriously.
I think that the amount of talent that goes into moviemaking produces a depth that is often overlooked.
For example, I was watching a 1955 movie titled Illegal, which was released by Warner Bros. and starred Edward G. Robinson. Robinson was a big star for Warner in the 1930s, primarily as a gangster, although he could also play good guys. In the 1940s, he slipped into character roles in such films as Double Indemnity, Our Vines Have Grapes, and The Stranger, with a memorable return to gangster roles in Key Largo in 1948. Robinson was called before the UnAmerican Activities Committee, as were many actors who had espoused liberal causes, and, while he was never blacklisted, his film offers dried up. He was also getting older and the studio system was crumbling. In the 1950s, he went back to the stage and starred in an occasional B movie like Illegal.
In Illegal, which was based on a 1910 play called The Mouthpiece that had been filmed for Warner in 1932 starring Warren Williams, Robinson plays a well-known district attorney who gets a murder conviction of a man. Later, he is called to the hospital on the night the man is to be executed to receive the death bed confession to the murder from another man. Robinson calls the prison demanding to speak to the warden but as the guard gets up to find the warden the lights in the prison dim, which is movie shorthand that the man has been electrocuted, that it is too late, that an innocent man was executed.
Robinson resigns amid all the newspaper stories about his mistake, becomes a drunk, ends up in jail, and there finds opportunities to become a criminal defense attorney, ultimately working for gangsters.
In one scene, he walks into the the office of the new district attorney and there on the book shelf in plain view is the Maltese Falcon, the statute of the "black bird" from the 1941 John Huston movie of the same name. In that movie, criminals search and search for the statue, which is supposed to be covered with jewels under black enamel, only to find that the statue is a fake.
One explanation as to why the statue is on the D.A.'s shelf in Illegal is that the set designers needed books and other things that would appear in a district attorney's office and simply took the Maltese Falcon from the prop room and put it on the shelf without thinking about it.
Possibly. But then there are other explanations. The Maltese Falcon was a film noir, possibly the first and best film noir. Illegal is a later film noir. The dark bird connected with an earlier, famous mystery might have appeared a fitting piece to decorate Illegal's set.
You can almost invent a back story for this. The plot of the Maltese Falcon takes place in San Francisco. The location of Illegal is never mentioned by name. Robinson calls "the state prison." Some writers have suggested that Robinson is a Manhattan D.A. But the location shooting shows streetcars, and streetcars were taken off the streets in Manhattan in the 1930s. In the 1950s, there were still streetcars on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The courthouse shown in the movie is the Criminal Courts Building on West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles. It could just be stock footage used without any intention of designating that the action takes place in Los Angeles. But there appears to be a west coast connection.
Whether the film takes place in Los Angeles or San Francisco, one can imagine that the Maltese Falcon statue, worthless, as the characters in that movie discovered, was taken by district attorney at the time of that movie as a memento, placed in his office, and inherited by his successors. If the story takes place in San Francisco, that makes sense. Even if it takes place in L.A., one of that district attorney's successors could have taken the D.A. job in L.A. and brought the statue that had been in his office with him.
It's interesting the power a movie image has, whether by intention or by accident.
Copyright 2014 by John T. Aquino
A Coda on the Sherlock Holmes' Copyright
by John Aquino on 09/01/14
As a coda to the previous blog on the copyright to the character of Sherlock Holmes, I note that the following.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held that the Conan Doyle Estate did not own copyright in the characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories published before 1923. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling June 16, 2014 and on Aug. 4 it awarded Leslie S. Klinger, the plaintiff in the case, $30,000 in attorneys fees he spent in the appeal. Klinger then asked the district court for attorneys fees of $50,000 he spent in the district court’s case.
In opposing those fees, the Conan Doyle Estate Aug. 18 wrote that attorneys fees are awarded to the prevailing party and that Klinger had not prevailed on his claim that his forthcoming book had not infringed the Conan Doyle copyrights.
The Estate wrote that Klinger claimed that the issue before the court was whether the publication of his forthcoming book infringes any copyright owned by the Conan Doyle Estate but declined to provide the book to the court and admitted the book was not completed. The Estate wrote that it had submitted substantial facts and argument on the scope of that copyrighted character formation, but the court did not address what the scope of that protection was, and did not (and could not) apply it to Klinger’s forthcoming book.
The Estate also noted that it had prevailed on some of the issues before the court. The court rejected Klinger’s argument that the story elements of the 10 post-1923 Sherlock Holmes stories were not protected by copyright and denied Klinger’s request for injunctive relief over any of the Sherlock Holmes story elements.
The Estate wrote, “And in arguing for full protection for the developments in Holmes’ character created in those Ten Stories, Conan Doyle pointed out that it is one thing to say as a theory that a public domain version of Holmes can be disentangled from the complete character formed in the Ten Stories. But it is quite another thing to actually do so without infringing the Ten Stories. Because the Ten Stories were set at various points in Holmes’s fictional life, in practice it is difficult if not impossible to use a public domain version of Holmes that does not infringe the Ten Stories….Because Mr. Klinger has never put his new book before any court, and the issue as to whether it infringes has yet to be decided, he cannot claim to be entitled to compensation for pursuing a rightful case, or for purposes of deterring Conan Doyle’s contention that a declaratory judgment should be made only on concrete facts.”
The plaintiff will respond and then the court will decide on the issue of attorneys fees.
Actors' Last Screen Moments
by John Aquino on 08/31/14
My recent post about celebrity deaths caused me to think about last movie or tv scenes of movie stars
- Dick Powell. He was a singer in Warner movie musicals until 1943 when he decided to completely change his image and starred as the detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet. From that point on he sang in movies only once more, six years later in the non-musical Mrs. Mike playing a Canadian mountie. He played in mostly film noir as adventurers and detectives, with a few comedies tossed in. Then around 1954, he and David Niven and Charles Boyer created Four Star Productions and alternated as stars of "Four Star Playhouse." In his autobiography, The Moon Is a Balloon, Niven described how in addition to acting in shows Powell was the one of the three with a good business and management sense. Powell also directed a few movies, most notably The Enemy Below in 1957. And then in 1963, Powell made a cameo appearance in a Four Star Productions' comedy series "Ensign O'Toole" about the schemes of the title character played by Dean Jones. The episode on April 28, 1963 was about a talent contest O'Toole and his men were holding. Powell, billed as Chief Richard E. Powell, showed up to audition. When he was doing movie musicals, Powell had appeared in military uniform in Flirtation Walk, The Singing Marine, and In the Navy. As a sailor accompanies him on the piano, Powell sings, "Over the seas let's go men. We're shoving right off, we're shoving right off again. Nobody knows where or when. We're shoving right off, we're shoving right off again." As he sings, he notices that O'Toole and his men appear disinterested. Powell continues singing, walks over to the accompanist, singing, "We're shoving right off for home! Shoving right off for home--" and then he takes the sheet music off the piano and says to O'Toole, "I think I get the picture, mates. Shove off?" O'Toole smiles and nods, and Powell walks away.. Powell had died Jan. 2, 1963, almost five months before the show was broadcast. It was his last professional appearance and the last time he sang on film. After he left the scene, O'Toole says to his men in an in-joke, "It just goes to show that without the navy I don't know how a guy like him would be able to support himself." A pretty fitting exit.
- Spencer Tracy was only 68 in 1967 when he appeared in Guess Who's Coming Together with Katherine Hepburn. But due to his alcoholism and a heart condition he looked like a very old man. It was his first movie in four years, and he felt it would be his last. In the movie, Tracy and Hepburn's daughter plans to marry a black doctor named John Prentice, played by Sidney Poitier. In the final scene, Tracy has a long speech to all concerned: "And Mrs. Prentice says that like her husband I'm a burned-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it's like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And strange as it seems, that's the only statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue--because I think you're wrong, you're as wrong as you can be. I admit I hadn't considered it, I hadn't even thought about it. But I know exactly how he feels about her, and there is nothing,absolutely nothing that you son feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina. Old? Yes. Burned out? Certainly. But I can tell you the memories are still there, clear, intact, indestructible, And they'll be there if I live to be a 110. Where John made his mistake, I think, was in attaching so much importance to what her mother and I think. Because in the final analysis, it doesn't matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they think and what they feel, and how much they feel for each other. And if it's half of what we felt for each other--that's everything." Tracy, who was a Catholic, never divorced his wife but lived with Hepburn for 25 years. In the scene, she is visiblly weeping as Tracy speaks. There's a real sense that he was expressing his love for her in the scene, which is beautifully written by William Rose. Tracy died 17 days after filming was completed.. Tracy was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award for the film, as was Hepburn. She won. Interestingly enough, Hepburn played Henry Fonda's wife in the 1981 film On Golden Pond. It was Fonda's last film role, and they both won Oscars.
- There are other examples. Tyrone Power in his last completed film, Witness for the Prosecution (1958) brilliantly played against type. Clark Gable, in a switch from his more recent string of comedies, tackled an Arthur Miller screenplay in The Misfits (1961) and said it was the first time he really acted in a movie. He died two weeks after the picture wrapped. Steve McQueen's last words on screen in The Hunter (1980) were "God bless you," said in response to his newly delivered baby's sneeze. In the film, he played a bounty hunter, coming full circle from his breakthrough role in the tv series "Wanted Dead or Alive." He died three months after the movie's release. Charles Laughton took on a Southern accent for the first time in Advise and Consent (1962) and etched a truly memorable final role as a cantankerous Southern senator. And John Wayne, who had survived cancer, played a dying gunfighter in The Shootist (1976) and would die three years later.
Reflections on Celebrity Deaths and Genius
by John Aquino on 08/25/14
The deaths of Richard Attenborough and Robin Williams have--as all deaths do--have caused me to reflect upon genius and its different facets--the mild mannered genius of a Manet or Tom Hanks and the mad genius of a Van Gogh or Andy Kaufman..
Attenborough lived to the age of 90 and had about a as well-rounded and as fruitful a career as one could have.
When he was just 18, Noel Coward gave him a memorable part in the 1941 movie In Which We Serve. Attenborough went on to play a teen-aged hoodlum in Brighton Rock (1947), the really solid planner of the great escape in the Great Escape (1963), comedy roles in movies like I'm All Right, Jack (1959) with Peter Sellers, and even sang and danced in Doctor Doolittle (1967), in which his number "I've Never Seen Anything Like It" is the liveliest part of that overlong and overdone film.
As a stage actor, Attenborough in 1952 had a leading role in the original cast of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which has the record for the longest run of any play in London or Broadway. He received a percentage of ticket sales which, since it is still running, was quite remunerative.
But Attenborough wanted to direct films, beginning with one of my favorites and a terribly underrated one, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), from Joan Littlewood's theatre piece blending songs of the period with the horror of World War I--it was antiwar and about Vietnam just as MASH (1970) was set in the Korean War and about Vietnam. He next directed two respectable historical dramas--Young Winston and A Bridge Too Far--and spent 20 years and money from The Mousetrap getting Gandhi (1982) to film. It won the Oscars for best direction and best film. He later directed Chaplin (1992) which brought Robert Downey Jr. an Oscar nomination for playing the title role. Attenborough directed Downey in doing the impossible, mimicking a slapstick comedy genius, just as Geoffrey Rush was able to do in the Private Life of Peter Sellers.
His films made money and won awards. Later critics have faulted the quality of Gandhi,but it won Oscars for 8 out of 11 nominations so it was certainly appreciated in its time.
And then Attenborough was able to come back as an actor later in life and star in the blockbuster Jurassic Park (1993), winning new fans and recognition. He was also married to his Mousetrap co-star for nearly seven decades. It was quite a successful and happy career and, at least evidently, life.
Robin Williams died two weeks prior at the age of 63. He too had a successful career, was universally loved and respected, and he killed himself, bringing up the question of the link of genius with madness.
The link between creativity and what is loosely called "madness" was recognized as far back as the ancient Greek philosopher Artistole--"Even the most excellent soul will have a mixture of madness"--and the roots of Greek music and drama in the myths and rituals of Orpheus and Bacchus. Painters such as Vincent Van Gogh have been thought mad and committed suicide and poets such as John Berryman. I wrote a long article some years back on the film actor John Barrymore that appeared in the Washington Post. He feared that he would go mad like his actor-father who died in an asylum. John Barrymore killed himself by alcohol.
You can obviously have a career like Attenborough's and not have the issue of genius and madness come up. Some could argue that Attenborough was a craftsman and not a genius, or at least not as much a genius as Williams.
With Williams, it was as if he was inspired by all these Greek muses at once. His breakthrough role was that of the alien on earth Mork from Ork in the tv show Mork and Mindy. His physical and mental agility were amazing. It was manic, Bacchian frenzy on the tube. With the premise that he as an alien had learned of earth's culture from tv and radio transmissions, he was able to seemingly have all of the last century of U.S. media explode out of him, for instance when he suddenly said in the voice of Lucille Ball, "Oh, Ricky, please let me be in the show!" and he'd answer as Desi Arnaz, "Lucy, you con't be intha show!"
He then effortlessly moved chameleon-like into movies, starting with Popeye, The World According to Garp, the Survivors, Moscow on the Hudson, and then a string of more serious roles, including Hello, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, The Fisher King, culminating in an Oscar for Good Will Hunting. He did standup, he did Broadway, he did the tv specials "Comedy Relief," he took cameos in friends' movies, he gave voice to the Genie in Disney's Aladdin (1992) and sang the Oscar-nominated song "Friend Like Me,"--he could do anything.
Initially, he was fueled in part by drugs, but after his friend John Belushi died in 1982 of a drug overdose Williams was sober for 20 years. But someone who pored such energy, who played so many voices, sometimes as if he were possessed--the line between genius and what some see as madness is a thin one.
He suffered from depression. He was said to work so much because it distracted him from his inner demons. He underwent open heart surgery in 2009. It slowed him down. He was also aging. He turned 60 in 2011. After he died, the tv media show Entertainment Tonight and other programs broadcast early and late interviews with Williams, and in the later ones he seems so much more quiet and reserved.
The last movies in which he had leading roles did not do well at the box office, and he seemed to focus on supporting or cameo roles. He returned to television in 2013 in a show called The Crazy Ones. It was cancelled after one season. And then he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Michael J. Fox ten years younger, also started in television and then branched out to movies, experiencing great success in the Back to the Future franchise. Both Williams and Fox excelled at both verbal and physical comedy.
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease when he was 30. He did not disclose it for six years until his symptoms became more pronounced. He left his hit tv show Spin City in 1996, established a foundation for Parkinson's Disease, and after five years, aided by advances in medical research, returned to television in Boston Legal and The Good Wife, playing characters who were handicapped.
Fox's comeback was remarkable. Also in 2013, he returned to television in The Michael J. Fox Show portrayal a character dealing with Parkinson's. Fox's show was cancelled sooner than Williams'. I have heard some people saying that it was difficult to laugh at or with Fox, seeing him struggling with the disease.
Williams, having been diagnose with Parkinson's, whose verbal and physical fury had made him a star, surely looked at Fox and may have told himself that that was the best that could happen to him.
Williams already suffered from depression and such news would surely worsen it.
I had a relative who killed himself. He had lost his job, moved across the country where he heard there were jobs, failed the employed test, couldn't pay his bills, wrecked the car and was threatened with being sued--and he slit his throat with a scissors.
As a young man at the time, I told myself, glibly, that the thing one had to do was just separate all of the things that were weighing down on you--okay, you'll find another job, you'll look into loans, part-time work, anything to pay your bills, you'll get a lawyer. As I've gotten older, I've seen that it might not be that easy, especially if one suffers from depression.
Williams evidently fought his depression by working. And then it looked like he might not be able to work.
And then there were all the voices in his head.
Williams' family issued statements that they didn't want the manner of his death to detract from the memory of his work. And that is absolutely as right for him as it is for Van Gogh and Berryman and Barrymore. But it does sadden the memory, and it make you think.
If you could choose a successful career in film, would you pick Attenborough's--distinguished and maybe a little short of greatness--or Williams'?
If you had a career like Attenborough's' would you perhaps prefer to have had a briefer and maybe more brilliant career and be called a genius, even if it could mean demons and suicide? Would someone like Williams have preferred the longer and smoother train ride that included old age and honors but also fewer creative firework highs that touched the horizon?
Well, of course, you can't choose. We are ruled, to a large extent, by our genes and by chance. And who could really make that choice?
The accomplishments of both Attenborough and Williams are to be admired and envied.
But we are still sad for Williams, whose life was briefer than we would have liked and because he evidently didn't experience the joy of his work as much as we did.
By John T. Aquino
Copyright 2014 by John T. Aquino
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
