What makes it different from others?

To me, this movie is perfection.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Filmed in Spain and France in 1966 and televised in France in May 1968 and on BBC 2 at Christmas 1982 (or '83?),The Immortal Story is Welles's second masterpiece from the mid-'60s after his Shakespeare/Holinshed adaptation - Chimes at Midnight (1965-196). Set in the Portuguese colony of Macao around 1890, it basically emphasises the essential loneliness and destiny of each human individual in a serene Tao-like style synthesised with Kabbalistic principles. Welles plays an ageing rich merchant - Mr Clay who arranges an encounter or game between Virginie (Jeanne Moreau) and a young blond sailor called Paul (Norman Eshley) to produce an heir for his million dollar fortune. According to Peter Cowie in The Cinema of Orson Welles ((1973) p. 197) - 'He knows he is doomed, but his gold is "proof against dissolution". Clay's clerk - a fascinating but passive Polish-Jewish émigré called Levinsky played by the remarkable young French actor Roger Coggio remarks that -'Now he may think that the pursuit of a story is even more interesting than the pursuit of money'. Although he remains a somewhat peripheral figure and dressed in a sort of Late-Victorian/'60s Mod-style - he sports a Homburg and frock coat,Levinsky is indispensable to Clay and 'he used his talents to fan the flames of greed and ambition in people round him...' (Cowie p.19). He keeps himself alive with the prophet Isaiah's hope for the future -'Strengthen ye the weak knees....For in the wilderness shall waters break out' written on a little parchment roll which refers to Welles's interest in Kabbalah perhaps? The music by Satie is perfectly chosen and the surreal psychedelic colours conjured up by Willy Kurant's camera evoke a metaphysical feel. The Time Out review remarks that 'the use of colour, deep focus and shadow is superb'.

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.

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.