Jon Mirsalis on Piano. (Maciste all'inferno) ."It reminds us at once of Méliès and Fritz Lang, Gustave Doré and Flash Gordon"-Le Cinéma Italian, Centre Pompidou Popular both in Italy and among Italian-American audiences in the States, the Maciste series offered a hero who was literally larger than life and who was so virtuous that the devil's disciples couldn't, and didn't, wait to lure him into hell. A Genoa docker, Bartolomeo Pagano, cast for his herculean proportions and grin, took the name Maciste and went on to become one of Italy's most popular actors. (Louis Delluc called him "the Guitry with the biceps.") When the restored Maciste all'inferno was shown at the 1994 Bologna Film Festival, it was noted: "(This) unpredictable and amusing film, rich in fantastic and bizarre humor, gained new glory in Italian cinema history when Fellini mentioned it as a sort of 'scena primaria' in his cinematographic subconscious: 'I'm sure that I remember it well because the image has remained so deeply impressed that I have tried to re-evoke it in all my films. I saw it standing with my father's arms around me amidst a crowd of people in wet overcoats because it was raining outside. I remember a large woman with nude belly, her belly button, her eyes, darkened with make-up, blazing. With an imperious movement of her arm she created a circle of flames around Maciste, he also half-naked and with a dove in his hand.'"