L'Inferno

I just watched a trailer for an incredibly old movie. The movie, L'Inferno (based on Dante's Inferno), was released in 1911 and was the first Italian feature length film. It really is a bit amazing to watch this when you think how old it is. To put this in perspective, consider Giuseppe de Liguoro, the director and actor who played Ugolino. He was born in 1869, which would make him 42 at the time the movie was released. Based on the assumption that people have their first child at 25 (I have no idea how accurate that number is, but let's just assume...), that would imply Liguoro's first grandchild was born in 1919. That's the year after WWI. If that grandchild were alive today, he/she would be 86 years old. Thus, for some of the people that you see in that trailer, their grandchildren have been born, lived full lives, and died. That just seems to be a rather mind-boggling fact.

In this day and age, we take movies and special effects for granted. It is wonderful when we get the opportunities to look back at things like this from the past and reflect on the roots of our modern art.