A film with unexpected twists. At first when I popped this film and I was expecting a retelling of the exact Dante Alighieri Inferno story.
Instead I got was a rags-to-riches Citizen Kane* story with parallels to Dante's Inferno.
Jim Carter is something of a miscreant, a man who looks for the easy buck and is willing to sell people down the road to get it.
Although some of his basic intentions might be kind his overall demeanour is not. He cares for his son, he cares for his wife. But only in so much that it doesn't affect his financial success.
I had thought this would be a retelling of the original Dante Inferno story, only done in modern times. In which a man who runs the carnival attraction known as 'Inferno' would convince Jim (our main character) to go through the attraction only to discover that it was the actual hell. And then he would learn the same lessons as Dante in the initial story. While his guide would fill the role of a Virgil.
That's not what they do at all. Oh the character of Virgil is still there. Pop McWade played by Henry B. Walthall. But he's literally just a guy who runs a carnival attraction. And he decides to hire Jim out of a sense of Charity, trying to give him a second chance. And to be fair Jim does do a lot of good for him. Jim convinces people to see his attraction and inevitably helps the entire Carnival grow into a massive sensation. Becoming something of their main manager. At first it seems like he'll be a pretty good guy. But you see it as time goes on that he wants to grow ever bigger and continuously make more and more money. Even to the point of creating a massive cruise ship ironically called 'The Paradise'.
It's Las Vegas on a giant cruise ship. And seeing as how at this point there was no Las Vegas (or at least the gambling equivalent of it). It was thought to make tons of money. But like everything else Jim invested in, he cuts corners and makes bad deals.
His Carnival attractions will start to break down almost killing Pop. Winch caused the suicide of one of Jim's close friends who he tried bribing to ensure that his original attraction didn't have to get closed down. He'll lose the love of his wife after she lies in court to protect him from prison time. And he'll lose his massive cruise ship in the end because of mismanagement of scab workers and the stupidity of drunken Aristocrats who set his own boat on fire. He'll lose everything in the long run but he may just save his own mortal soul.
Overall it's a very good story. The actors do a convincing job, the script is entertaining and the set design is fantastic. There are so many variant sets in this film. You very rarely reuse the same set twice. And they keep changing locations all the time so you never get bored of any particular area. You start on a cruise ship and a boiler room where the main characters working. Then you switch over to a small-time carnival attraction which switches over to Office Buildings then switches over to Jim's personal home eventually there's a courtroom and then finally there's his personal cruise ship. All of which have their own unique styles to them. With the last 20 minutes feeling like a simplified Titanic film.
And then there's the pièce de résistance. A recreation of Dante's Hell As told in his story. Complete with massive caves, loads of flames, giant Boulders and thousands of extras all running around screaming in pain. Done in the style of various Renaissance paintings.
Strangely enough there's more parallels between Jim Carter to Alexander the Great then to Dante himself. You could have easily removed the entire Dante's subplot replaced it with just Alexander and most likely end up with a very similar film. Of course this is all reference to the book as well as they do make reference to Alexander the Great in Hell. Although I think he's actually in limbo if I remember right. It doesn't matter.
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