Sorry, this movie sucks

One of my all time favorites.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

In a documentary about Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau talks about Welles' obsession with fake noses when he acted. In "The Immortal Story," he sports a fake nose and very obvious age makeup. It doesn't matter. With his voice and presence, he was always a commanding force.Of interest, the movie was filmed in and around Welles' home near Madrid, and waiters at Chinese restaurants were used for extras.The film is based on a story by Karen Blixen and takes place in 19th Century Macao. After destroying his business partner, Mr. Clay (Welles) lives in the man's home, now old and dying, with only his bookkeeper Levinsky (Roger Coggio) to keep him company. One night, they are talking about a story Clay heard, and Lewinsky informs him that it is an old story, not true, that has been repeated by sailors for years. The story concerns an old man who pays a sailor to impregnate his wife.Clay wants to turn this story into fact. Levinsky approaches the ex- partner's daughter, Virginie (Moreau). She takes the job for triple the fee he is offering - for her, this is a way to get revenge for her father's ruin and death. Clay himself chooses the sailor, Paul (Norman Eshley) and offers him a 5-guinea gold piece.Interesting, strange story, perhaps too literary to be filmed, with a Citizen Kane ending. Despite being a little stilted, this is a very Welles film - an old man with great wealth, a control freak; and in a God-like manner, manipulates people to his own ends. Making a story real is a bid for immortality.Jeanne Moreau is, as usual, mesmerizing as Virgine - sexual, beautiful, and dark. The film seems to be a mirror of Welles' own life, the director as God but who is dependent on others to make things happen. And in the end, alone.

Immortal Story, The (1968) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Orson Welles directed this film about an old man (Welles) who pays a young woman to be his wife and then pays a young man to sleep with her. This is a rather strange film to rate because on a technical level the film is downright brilliant. Everything from the visual style to the acting to the directing are all top-notch but I could never get caught up in the story. The version I watched ran 63-minutes and it moves very well but I just wish I could have gotten caught up in the story better because Welles works wonders with the low budget and delivers something truly beautiful on the eyes.

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.

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.