Tracy's Carnival Of Lost Souls

Dante's Inferno (1935) A Crowded Fox Fairground

I call Dante’s Inferno a sampling of brute entertainment, that 30’s way of slamming over melodrama in terms so forceful as to leave viewership wrung out. Dante’s Inferno has a building collapse, massive fire, and capper of a tour through Hell that was surely come to Jesus for whatever sinners bought a ticket in. This all sounds like sermon from on high, but Dante’s Inferno is no biblical, being straight-ahead telling of business done ruthless and how it drags Spencer Tracy down by his greed. That was popular theme in the 30’s, when ceilings to wealth seemed built by God himself. So maybe Dante’s Inferno is biblical after all. Its lesson would not be inapt in a Sunday school, where warnings might issue to those who’d worship mammon. There were so many pictures with a message like Dante’s Inferno’s as to dissipate impact. It was instead a “big show” and dispenser of sensation, which is noble goal any movie might aspire to. Taken on these terms, Dante’s Inferno is among richest vein of film fun from all of that decade. To call this brute entertainment is to place Dante’s Inferno with rarefied company that is King Kong, Tarzan and His Mate, precious few others to take us by the throat and shake hard.

There is a DVD from Fox On-Demand that is very nice. Dante’s Inferno was a late departure out of Fox Film Corporation before that venerable firm merged with Zanuck and Joe Schenck’s Twentieth-Century Pictures. It was also Spencer Tracy’s last work for the company before he joined MGM. Tracy’s output for Fox wasn’t always stellar, him playing go-getters most times out. Dante’s Inferno is great example of Tracy with all of fight left in him, a show-no-mercy dervish that Metro would not abide. Compare him here with upright “Square John” McMasters that Tracy would play in five years later Boom Town, wherein he loses an oil fortune plus Claudette Colbert to Clark Gable, who is rough 1940 equivalent to “Jim Carter” as portrayed by Tracy in Dante’s Inferno. Did Spence note screen dynamism being sapped by the Lion? Some of parts gotten by partner Gable should have gone Tracy’s way. Dante’s Inferno had shown he could do them with gusto. Did a priest collar Tracy frequently wore at Metro choke much of liveliness out of him?

Hell Of a Damnation Sequence As Shown Above Is Mid-Point Highlight of Dante's Inferno

Fox as fairground operator sold Dante’s Inferno a same way as Tracy’s corrupt Jim Carter in the film. Every poster and virtually all art zeroed on the Hell tour that is halfway-in highlight of the film. True, it’s the set-piece all would remember, but you couldn’t blame them for thinking Dante’s Inferno was all Hell at a feature’s length. Come to think of it, has there ever been a movie set entirely in purgatory? (Many have seemed so, admittedly, though not by intent) Dante’s Inferno got round a strict-applied Code by making its Hell a consequence of bad behavior engaged by Tracy, his next stop a sea of hot coals lest he heed warning. Here was showmanship sermon as had been preached by DeMille, who got there first where outflanking censors was the game. Viewers are to this day shocked by Dante-views of writhing sinners, some to a point of assuming it’s footage from earlier silent versions (there were several), but no, this Dante’s Inferno built a fresh Hell from 1935 ground up.

Dante’s Inferno is one of those where every shot is beautifully composed. This must have been a wow on nitrate. Man behind cameras was Rudolph Maté, who photographed Euro classics (Vampyr, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc) and would later direct in the US. His work was always distinctive. Even 16mm prints looked good. He’s teamed for Dante’s Inferno with director Harry Lachman. They'd be together again a year later for Our Relations, by far a most handsome of Laurel and Hardy features. Of Dante support players, Henry B. Walthall is saintly guide toward righteousness. He was perhaps an only one who could be that with utter conviction. Walthall was himself martyr for silent artistry that had been discarded. He stood for wisdom bought with melancholy, knowing his way was past but alert to small parts old friends threw him. John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Tod Browning, all used Walthall. Maybe he was their idea of a luck piece. Walthall had after all headlined The Birth of a Nation, most everyone’s pick for biggest and best so far made. A major scene John Ford did for 1934’s Judge Priest made a virtual monument of Walthall. The “old” actor died, to my astonishment (an IMDB check), at just fifty-eight years old. How many gathered up so much history in so short a time?