The Immortal Story (15.)
1968. Directed by Orson Welles.
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, Roger Coggio and Norman Eshley. 58 mins.
The irony of Orson Welles making a film about a bitter old man so rich he can make stories come true just because he wills them into being, was probably not lost on him. By this stage of his career, like most every other stage of his career, money was very much an object. This adaptation of an Isak Dinesen short story is cobbled together with a small cast working in a limited number of tightly shot locations, none of which were on the same side of the planet as its stated location, Macao.
Welles is the miserly and ruthless Mr Clay, the richest man in Macao. Afflicted by gout he cannot sleep so has his clerk (Coggio) read to him from his past book of accounts, every night. One night Clay starts to tell him a true story he had been told many years earlier about a rich merchant who is dying but wants to leave his fortune to an heir. He hires a young sailor to sleep with the young wife he had married a few years earlier. Before he can finish they story the clerk interrupts him to say that he already knows the story as it is one that is told by all sailors on every voyage. Clay is affronted by the idea of made up things, ““I don't like prophecies. People should only record things that already happened.” And so sets the clerk the task of making the story come true. That way there will be at least one sailor who can tell the story as a true experience.
It is a story that is typical Dinesen (known to cinema goers for Babette's Feast and Out of Africa) – simple and entrancing like a fairy tale yet mysterious and inscrutable. It seems almost trivial and slight when you are watching but the moment you try to put your finger on what exactly it was all about you suddenly appreciate just how rich and elusive the tale is.
Playing Clay, Welles is encased in theatrical make up. The darken shades are supposed to represent age but makes him look like he hasn't washed properly after a performance of Othello. There is something a bit hammy about the whole production. The sailor (Eshley) is the most innocent boy who ever set sail and his hair and improbably blond. It's all just a little bit too much, yet the film itself is the most meagre of things, there's hardly anything to it all.
It isn't Babette's Feast and you suspect most of the quality is down to Dinesen's writing and the music of Erik Satie that drifts over the images. Satie could make an Adam Sandler film ache with poignancy; it is the perfect accompaniment to this, and at the same time barely needed. As you watch this small band of performers doing their best in this limited selection of quiet and undisturbed rooms and sets, not a passerby or extra in sight, like outcasts ostracised by society, the poignancy and heartbreak is all there for you. It needs only the slightest of proddings.
Welles began his film career playing a man of great potential who didn't ultimately amount to much. Now, at the end, viewers are intensely aware that these actors playing characters playing out a story of despair and unfulfilled yearning, are playing out something rather too close to home.
Magician review
Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight
Too Much Johnson review
The Immortal Story (15.)
1968. Directed by Orson Welles.
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, Roger Coggio and Norman Eshley. 58 mins.
The irony of Orson Welles making a film about a bitter old man so rich he can make stories come true just because he wills them into being, was probably not lost on him. By this stage of his career, like most every other stage of his career, money was very much an object. This adaptation of an Isak Dinesen short story is cobbled together with a small cast working in a limited number of tightly shot locations, none of which were on the same side of the planet as its stated location, Macao.
Welles is the miserly and ruthless Mr Clay, the richest man in Macao. Afflicted by gout he cannot sleep so has his clerk (Coggio) read to him from his past book of accounts, every night. One night Clay starts to tell him a true story he had been told many years earlier about a rich merchant who is dying but wants to leave his fortune to an heir. He hires a young sailor to sleep with the young wife he had married a few years earlier. Before he can finish they story the clerk interrupts him to say that he already knows the story as it is one that is told by all sailors on every voyage. Clay is affronted by the idea of made up things, ““I don't like prophecies. People should only record things that already happened.” And so sets the clerk the task of making the story come true. That way there will be at least one sailor who can tell the story as a true experience.
It is a story that is typical Dinesen (known to cinema goers for Babette's Feast and Out of Africa) – simple and entrancing like a fairy tale yet mysterious and inscrutable. It seems almost trivial and slight when you are watching but the moment you try to put your finger on what exactly it was all about you suddenly appreciate just how rich and elusive the tale is.
Playing Clay, Welles is encased in theatrical make up. The darken shades are supposed to represent age but makes him look like he hasn't washed properly after a performance of Othello. There is something a bit hammy about the whole production. The sailor (Eshley) is the most innocent boy who ever set sail and his hair and improbably blond. It's all just a little bit too much, yet the film itself is the most meagre of things, there's hardly anything to it all.
It isn't Babette's Feast and you suspect most of the quality is down to Dinesen's writing and the music of Erik Satie that drifts over the images. Satie could make an Adam Sandler film ache with poignancy; it is the perfect accompaniment to this, and at the same time barely needed. As you watch this small band of performers doing their best in this limited selection of quiet and undisturbed rooms and sets, not a passerby or extra in sight, like outcasts ostracised by society, the poignancy and heartbreak is all there for you. It needs only the slightest of proddings.
Welles began his film career playing a man of great potential who didn't ultimately amount to much. Now, at the end, viewers are intensely aware that these actors playing characters playing out a story of despair and unfulfilled yearning, are playing out something rather too close to home.
Magician review
Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight
Too Much Johnson review
