The Immortal Story

source: The Immortal Story

Certainly not the late masterpiece some people have claimed it to be but Orson Welles' "The Immortal Story" is still extraordinary in ways so many films aren't. It clocks in at under an hour so it really is the perfect miniature. It is a film about the art of story-telling with only four main speaking parts. Welles could just as easily have done this on the radio and yet visually this is extremely beautiful, (it was his first film in colour), and still typically 'Wellesian'. He adapted it from a novel by Isak Dinesen and he, himself, plays the role of the old merchant in the 'story' of the old merchant who hires a young sailor to sleep with his young wife, (Jeanne Moreau is the woman hired by the merchant to play the wife in the story). The sailor is played by the English actor Norman Eshley and he's painfully wooden but he doesn't upset the flow of the piece; in fact, his banal, robotic diction actually fits it. No masterpiece then, but this short piece, which almost feels thrown together, stands head and shoulders over the best work of many lesser directors.

Aside from the lovely and moody music by Erik Satie, there isn't a lot about this strange film that would appeal to most viewers. I also have no idea why French television paid Orson Welles to bring this Karen Blixen story to the small screen...but apparently they thought it was a brilliant idea. Orson Welles directed and stars in this odd morality tale. A rich man (Welles) tells his lackey a story about a rich man paying a sailor to impregnate the rich man's wife. The lackey assures him that this is a myth and it never happened...and the story has been passed around by sailors for years. Oddly, the rich man decides to make the story true by paying a woman to sleep with a sailor of his choosing. The story is, I assume, about the corruption of money and power. Frankly, I didn't care as I found the whole thing pretentious and long-winded. I know it's seen as great art as ANYTHING by Welles is great art...even though he rarely actually finished any of his film projects. Technically, it's reasonably well made but all I know is that it left me cold and confused as to why anyone would care to make this story in the first place.

This is a very tight ,though highily clestophobic movie, with a simple, almost bed-time-story simplistic script. Nonetheless it is a powerfull message, superbly given...Enjoy!

Recent airing of this (TCM) provided my last chance to see a Welles film for the first time. Do the "immortals" appeal primarily to the young? The definitive experiment, of course, is impossible. I'll never see "Citizen Kane" for the first time again. "The Immortal Story" is a short, dream-like parable suggesting (to me) that, in a transient "material world" stories immortalize our spiritual "genes," and that we need both. It employs the now-popular strategy of a story-within-the-story becoming the story. The verdict on Welles' "final bow"? Why we choose someone like him to be our god. (I wonder if a language could be constructed comprised only of Bob Dylan lyrics?). Maybe the meaning of "The Immortal Story" was left intentionally intangible. Maybe that's the point.

Several have pointed out that The Immortal Story is based on a novel by Isak Dinesen, as the credits state. As I watched it, and learned that Paul and Virginie are the names of the lovers, I recalled that at least two French works have been written with the title: Paul et Virginie. A play by Jean Cocteau, and a novel by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who lived 1737-1814. I wonder if Welles (or Dinesen?) might have been influenced by those works, or at least the Saint-Pierre, but I can't tell any real similarity in the plots, perhaps in the poignant tone of the love story. The Saint-Pierre novel is a pastoral about two children who were brought up on an exotic island (Mauritius?) as brother and sister (although they are not). Virginie is sent away to France to become educated and society-worthy, and to separate the children. But she insists on returning to Paul, her true love, and dies in a shipwreck before she gets back to the island. Young love thwarted.

Some films are very long. For instance Antonioni's "La Notte", again with Jeanne Moreau - sorry for being in love with her. Hardly anything happens in that movie. Though you can't keep your eyes out of the screen. Fascinating (to me, at least). The producers nowadays are afraid of "zapping". Films are stroboscopic. Add zoom and tracking. Mix the three together. You have TV's "CSI: Miami". Caruso is great fun, notably because of his caricatured acting (though he plays exactly what he is supposed to play, and he does it very well - his lines are so stupid... poor actor), but such obvious manipulation in filming is off-putting. And I get bored, so bored... "The Immortal Story" is quite a short film. But the most beautiful I have ever seen in my whole life. I could watch it again and again 'till death do us part'. People call this "movie" literary, because of (the great great) K. Blixen - I. Dinesen. It is. It is nonetheless a move of the soul, a story of tale, legend, fate, and (un)achievement. It tells us you cannot be a link of the immortal story - the chain - unless you give your life to it, and die. So always did Welles, the greatest director of all times (to me). It is all about creation: genesis, generation, transmission and... your life.

This was Orson Welles' only film in color apart from the documentary F for Fake which he made in 1973. After this film he sadly did not get the change to write and direct more movies. As mentioned before he made one documentary in the seventies, shot sections of the movie Other Side of the Wind (never finished it), made a bunch of commercials and starred in horrible movies (apart from The Kremlin Letter, Waterloo, Catch 22, A safe Place, Ten Days Wonder and Get to Know Your Rabbitt). So the only great thing we have from Orson Welles as a pioneer movie director during the last 20 years of his live (he died in 1985) is Chimes of Midnight (1966) and this film which he made in 1968 for french television. This film is short and excellent. The way Orson uses color celluloid is spellbinding, i've never seen anything like it, he uses red and green colors like a painter and projects a certain eerie feeling seldom seen in cinema. The story is a typical one by Welles. A rich and powerful older man is lonesome in his mansion and only wants to be loved. For those of you who love cinema, this film is a must see by one of the greatest directors of all time. Based on a story by danish writer Karen Blixen.

I just saw The Immortal story for the first time today thanks to TCM. I was impressed by the otherworldly quality of the film. Reading through the IMDb reviews I was surprised that no one speculated as to why Wells chose this story. To me the answer seems obvious. The film is about a lonely old man who wants to bring a story he has heard to life. He knows that he cannot accomplish the task alone so he turns to a minion in his employ to arrange the set piece and hire the players. Ironically even when he succeeds, it becomes clear that no one will ever hear the recounting of the story. This is how Wells probably viewed his own life. ​Throughout his film career he struggled unhappily with his dependence on the help of producers and his need to control actors in order to bring his artistic visions to life. Sadly, even on the few occasions when he successfully got films completed, to him it seemed as if he never really had an audience.

Director-star Orson Welles also adapted Isak Dinesen's rather pointless book about an aged millionaire recluse living in China who tells his employee of an incredible story he heard while in the service regarding a rich, dying man, his terrible wife and a sailor-stud. The employee explains that this tale is just a legend, but the millionaire aims to make it fact. The sexual implications in the narrative aren't ignored by Welles, though they are tip-toed around (probably due to the restrictions of 1968), and when Welles as the "old gentleman" finds himself the perfect boy to complete his plan, it's hard not to smirk when he calls the bottle-blonde "a fine looking sailor" and then offers him money. Who needs Jeanne Moreau when these two are hitting it off so well? ** from ****