Dante's Inferno, not the Italian poem but about the poet/painter Dante Rossetti, from 1967.  Oliver Reed again as Rossetti who out of love buried his poetry with his dead lover, only later to have the body exhumed as his creative talents faded and he needed the poems to sustain his reputation.

"His search for beauty did not end with his marriage to Elizabeth Siddal, the shop-girl who had been his chaste fiancée for ten years and his model for hundreds of idealised portraits. His wife's suicide filled him with remorse and he buried his poems with her body. Seven years later he had the body exhumed and recovered his poems, but not his peace of mind..." (Radio Times, 22 Dec 1967, click here) .

A typical Ken Russell start to a film with the unexpected, the light shining on the coffin being raised, the poems pulled from the skeleton's hand, followed by the carnival with Reed jumping through a bonfire of books.

The film then tells the story leading up to these events.

Oliver Reed is convincing as Dante Rossetti the poet and painter who formed the Pre-Raphael Brotherhood of painters and poets but whose life of excess affected his creativity. "Oliver Reed's Rossetti is neither romanticised nor entimentalied; it is dead in keeping" (T.C. Worsley, Television: The Ephemeral Art, 1970).

Judith Paris as Elizabeth Siddal, who would pose for paintings, here as Ophelia drowning herself.  She longs for marriage with Rossetti  however he strings her along and despite his attempts "after five years of almost daily visits, Miss Siddal remains a virgin".

 "‘Lizzie’ Siddal began as a model, then learnt to paint, and also wrote poetry…. Although today Lizzie Siddal’s willowy build, gaunt features and lustrous copper-coloured hair are considered signs of beauty, in the 1850s being very thin was not considered sexually attractive, and red hair was described by one female journalist as “social suicide”. Through her modeling work and the success of the paintings she appeared in, Lizzie helped change the public opinion of beauty.  The love story between Siddal and Rossetti is like that of a tortured adolescent film script: for 10 years they were ‘engaged’, but Rossetti refused to set a wedding date. Neither was easy to live with: Siddal was addicted to the drug laudanum, and Rossetti was serially unfaithful" (from The tragedy of art’s greatest supermodel by Lucinda Hawksley, 31 Jul 2020 on BBC Culture click here
)."

The preparations lead to fellow Pre-Raphaelite brother John Everett Millais's Ophelia "Ophelia represented an important period in the artist's career where he was at a stage where he could devote the time required to each of his works and was under no pressure to rush. Ophelia required great planning and the artist took his time to capture everything correctly and as he had intended. He would use his preferred model and carefully lie her in water to capture the correct effects to her face and body as would have occurred if she was at the bottom of the stream, as he was creating from the original extract from a literature piece. Millais paintings have a calmness in them, in most cases" (from John Everett Millais website click here).

Another pose leading to Rossetti's Il Santo Graal.

Just as Ken's films on composers are full of music, here the film is  packed with poetry and art, the words linked to the images.

Christina Rossetti the sister played by Iza Teller.  She shows disdain for Elizabeth.

She was a poet “… her pious scrupulousness seems at odds with the heartfelt emotion expressed in her poetry…Later twentieth-century biographers, however, have tended to make more intimate moves and have sought to decode the writings in terms of a personal romantic disappointment” (Lindsay Duguid in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 8 Jan 2009, click here).

Russell regular Andrew Faulds as William Morris beside religious imagery "At the age of 18, Morris enrolled as a student at the University of Oxford in preparation to join the clergy... Having become disillusioned with the church during his studies, Morris... instead decided to pursue a creative life and left for London where they met the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Morris was most recognised in his lifetime for his contribution to Victorian poetry and is the author of many poetical works… Morris died on 3rd October 1896 at the age of 62, leaving behind some of the most iconic pieces of decorative art of the nineteenth century" (Who was William Morris? by Emily Carrington Freeman on the National Trust website click here).

Now married to Rossetti Elizabeth loses her baby and becomes addicted to laudanum.

When life becomes too much she commits suicide.

Ah! dear one, we were young so long, It seemed that youth would never go, For skies and trees were ever in song And water in singing flow In the days we never again shall know. Alas, so long! Ah! then was it all Spring weather? Nay, but we were young and together. Ah! dear one, I've been old so long, It seems that age is loth to part, Though days and years have never a song, And oh! have they still the art That warmed the pulses of heart to heart? Alas, so long! Ah! then was it all Spring weather? Nay, but we were young and together. Ah! dear one, you've been dead so long,— How long until we meet again, Where hours may never lose their song Nor flowers forget the rain In glad moonlight that never shall wane? Alas, so long! Ah! shall it be then Spring weather, And ah! shall we be young together? Alas so long, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 Ken regularly photographs people with their mirror images, here both confess to their reflections.

"His most persuasive examination  of the contrast between artistic creation and the needs of the flesh, with scenes of disturbing grotesquerie balanced by erotic interludes.  Dante's Inferno also shows Russell trying to reconcile the contradiction between historical reality and artistic reality which is at the heart of his experiments with documentary form" (John Baxter, An Appalling Talent, ch2)

Alongside Reed are Judith Paris, Andrew Faulds, Iza Teller as Christina Rossetti and Gala Mitchell. Derek Boshier, one of the artists from Pop Goes the Easel, plays Millais. The script was co-written by Russell and Austin Frazer with Frazer giving the commentary.

Cinematography was by Nat Crosby.  Costumes were by Shirley Kingdon, who would marry Ken and continue her career as Shirley Russell. Editing is by Russell regulars Michael Bradsell and Roger Crittenden.

Music includes

• Henze Invocation of Apollo, Symphony 3

• Prokofiev Symphony 3

• Ireland The Forgotten Role

• Suppé La belle Galatée overture

• Ketelbey In a Persian Market

• Walton Richard III prelude

• Messiaen L'Heure Vient Ou Les Mort

• Lidholm Rites II Procession

• Holst, Planets Suite

Brian Hoyle in the DVD notes states that the 90 minute film cost £19,000.

Ken's credit includes a photo of William Herschel, not someone in the film but according to the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum he established the term photography "Although the word 'photography' was used as early as 1932 by Professor Stenger, it was Herschel’s paper that finally gave photography a common nomenclature" (click here).

All images from the DVD of the film.