Watch the First Spectacular Film Adaptation of the Odyssey (1911)

Pub­lic and com­mer­cial spaces around the world are now lined with imagery of a ver­te­bra-stud­ded bat­tle hel­met and stat­ues sur­round­ed by flame. It’s all part of the pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for Christo­pher Nolan’s adap­ta­tion of the Odyssey, which will begin open­ing in the­aters lat­er this month. Much has been said and writ­ten about how the project rep­re­sents the next phase of Nolan’s ever-grander cin­e­mat­ic ambi­tions, but bank­ing on the spec­ta­cle val­ue of Homer has a long his­to­ry in film­mak­ing. When the Ital­ian silent adap­ta­tion L’Odis­sea came out in 1911, for exam­ple, it was uncer­tain even whether audi­ences would tol­er­ate the 44 min­utes it took to depict Odysseus’ ardu­ous jour­ney home.

Though it was released in the fall of 1911 in Italy and the fol­low­ing win­ter in the U.S., L’Odis­sea now looks like a sum­mer block­buster avant la let­tre, or ante lit­ter­am — or then again, giv­en the mate­r­i­al, πρὶν ὀνομασθῆναι, though most of us are still wait­ing to see just how ancient Nolan and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have allowed them­selves to get.

By the stan­dards of their day, the mak­ers of L’Odis­sea appear to have spared no expense on sets, cos­tumes, and even visu­al effects, most notably in its por­tray­al of the cyclops Polyphe­mus. Tech­ni­cal­ly, none of it may mea­sure up to what Nolan and com­pa­ny have in store, but the the­atri­cal ges­tures, shift­ing col­or tints, and occa­sion­al­ly bat­tered tex­tures do their part to con­jure up a real­i­ty of their own.

L’Odis­sea was actu­al­ly the sec­ond major lit­er­ary adap­ta­tion of that year for its direc­tors, the trio of Francesco Bertoli­ni, Adol­fo Padovan, and Giuseppe De Liguoro, all work­ing at the stu­dio Milano Films. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured their first, L’In­fer­no, which dra­ma­tizes the first and most famous part of Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy at a length of 73 min­utes. That run­time qual­i­fied it as the first fea­ture-length film ever pro­duced in Italy, by com­par­i­son to which L’Odis­sea may have actu­al­ly felt like a more famil­iar view­ing expe­ri­ence to con­tem­po­rary view­ers accus­tomed to shorts. Now that human­i­ty has been re-accli­mat­ed to watch­ing things a few min­utes at a time here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, Nolan’s near­ly three-hour Odyssey looks like a bold move indeed. But then, an epic poem demands an epic inter­pre­ta­tion.

Note: If you click “cc” on the YouTube video above, Eng­lish sub­ti­tles will appear.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Hear the First Book of Homer’s Ili­ad Read Aloud in the Orig­i­nal Greek

Watch All 18,225 Lines of the Ili­ad Read by 66 Actors in a Marathon Event For an Audi­ence of 50,000

Watch L’Inferno (1911), Italy’s First Fea­ture Film and Per­haps the Finest Adap­ta­tion of Dante’s Clas­sic

Cinecit­tà Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.