After casting Sean Bean in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I can forgive Ken Russell of almost any sin. Even Dante’s Inferno. Most of it.
Through a psychedelic ’60s lens, with the Pre-Raphaelite circle portrayed as drink-mad, cemetery-defiling pyromaniacs on top of all the usual Russell weirdness, Dante’s Inferno the only film I’ve ever awoken at dawn for, snarling over the final seconds of the auction: “It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s the only DVD copy I’ve ever seen anywhere, and it’s mine…”
Now, someone thoughtful has uploaded the whole wacky display to YouTube, so you can enjoy it as much as I did all those years ago, alone in my flat, wondering what on Earth I’d allowed into my life.
Don’t expect a history lesson. Do expect drunken bicycle jousting, zombie Lizzie Siddal, and Oliver Reed playing himself. No, it isn’t sensitive. But if you’ve ever seen the schlocky ’70s horror Burnt Offerings, you can’t really dislike Reed. My late Auntie Ann used to drink with him, and maintained he was a gentleman. He’s not a bad likeness of Rossetti, physically; dark and languid in layer upon layer of shabby Victorian tailoring. Jan Marsh has a chapter on the film in her excellent book The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal
Leave me alone – I’m smouldering, solidly.
Topsy and Janey, experiencing an approximation of married bliss.
Judith Paris as Lizzie Siddal. Again, quite a good likeness.
…and Swinburne, getting overly-friendly with the Oxford dead. You cannot take him anywhere.