In the movie The Man Who Quit Smoking, the director Tage Danielsson came up with the idea to revive characters from Dante's epic to place in the story of his modern day movie. The film was released in 1972 in Sweden as a comedy but within ten years the movie gained international acclaim through it being included in multiple international film festivals.
The movie tells the story of a man who's name is quite relatively, Dante Alighieri. Dante is trying to quit smoking and does everything he can to escape from this "Hell" of his, which is smoking. His love of his life is also non coincidently named Beatrice. The main point of Dante quitting smoking is so that he will inherit the large fortune that his father has left him. If he does not do this in a certain amount of days (14), his uncles will receive the large sum of money.
Throughout the story there are many allusions made to Dante's Inferno. One such instance is towards the start of his quitting, Dante hires a detective agency to help him quit smoking. This service has many similarities to the role of Virgil in the actual poem. The agency keeps him on the right path, keeps him from being frustrated or angry or sad, and ultimately leads him to his goal.
During 1972 this movie was largely being advertised in Sweden as having a large amount of similarities to the poem itself. What is interesting though, is that Danielsson did not read the poem himself before the beginning of the movie, but had his screenwriters come up with comparisons so that his movie would relate and be similar to the great poem that would surely give his movie the press that he wanted for it.
Below is the link to the internet movie database page of the movie which has more detailed information about the history and plot of the movie, hopefully if you can get your hands on an english translation of this movie you will like it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068916/
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