The Immortal Story (1968)

Orson Welles’s The Immortal Story (1968) is one of the films from his second bargain basement period as an outcast Hollywood director living in Europe.  The first period occurred after the domestic box office and critical failures of his plagued production of The Lady from Shanghai (1948) and the low budget Macbeth (1948 as well).   During the first period, he appeared in Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) and other films and directed Othello (1952) and the ultra-low budget Mr. Arkadin (1955).  Arkadin, for me, shares a primary quality with The Immortal Story, filmed for French television after Welles was once again unable to work in Hollywood after Touch of Evil (1958).  Essentially, both are about rich men, both played by Welles, who have grown obsessed with narrative, perception, and historical legacy. 

Arkadin tells the story of a journalist named Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) who is hired by millionaire business tycoon and socialite Gregory Arkadin (Welles) to research his past – which Arkadin claims to have no memory of.  When Van Stratten discovers some dark secrets in Arkadin’s closet and threatens to disclose them to his daughter Raina (Paola Mori), the plot thickens.  As Joseph McBride describes the character of Arkadin in his book on Welles (1996), his “sole purpose is to obliterate the truth about himself and to vanish into the shadow of legend” (131).  The film begins with a text stating the central focus of the story:  “A certain great and powerful king once asked a poet, ‘What can I give you of all I have?’  He wisely replied, ‘Anything, Sir…  Except your secret.’”  The Immortal Story is concerned with many of the same issues:  the desire of rich men to be omnipotent storytellers (both films can also be seen as extensions of Citizen Kane) in order to preserve their own legacies.    

The Immortal Story, an adaptation of Karen Blixen’s story, tells a similar tale:  Mr. Clay (Welles) is an elderly rich merchant living in 19^th century Macao.  One evening, Clay has his bookkeeper (Roger Coggio) read to him from something other than the account books.  The bookkeeper recites the prophecy of Isaiah.  Clay interrupts him, not caring for the story which he writes off as myth, and begins telling the bookkeeper a tale about a rich man who hired a sailor to impregnate his wife.  The bookkeeper interrupts his boss and explains that nearly everyone knows the story, but no one knows the man.  It has never happened; it, too, is a myth.  The bookkeeper’s revelation frustrates Clay who rants “I will make it happen now.  I do not like pretense.  I do not like prophecies.  I like facts.” 

In order to fulfill his wish, Clay sends the bookkeeper to hire the daughter of his former business partner (Jeanne Moreau) to take the role of his wife.  She accepts, hoping to take her revenge on Clay, whose selfish business practices drove her father to suicide.  Next, the sailor is hired and the two actors are placed in a bedroom in Clay’s estate as he waits outside for the prophecy to become fact.  When it does, and Clay does not live through the night, the ultimate irony is disclosed:  in order for the story to become reality, it needs a storyteller and someone to consume it.  Clay is dead; he is like a movie producer or director who has set a production in motion (the film is very much a self-reflexive account of what it means to tell stories, be them cinematic or literary) and has died behind the wheel.  He can no longer be the driving force behind the tale.  With the woman acting out of spite and unwilling to spread the story, that only leaves the sailor (Norman Eshley) who, when asked by the bookkeeper if he will tell it, simply replies “To whom would I tell it?  Who in the world would believe it if I told it?  I would not tell it for a hundred times five guineas.”  The film depicts a man whose financial success has given him the means to become a storyteller but, in the process of becoming rich, he has alienated himself from anyone who may want to hear that story. 

Welles was in a similar position at the time as an alienated filmmaker in search of an audience.  The difference is that he did not have unlimited financial resources.  Also, like Clay’s immortal story, Welles’s Immortal Story is incredibly difficult for the American cinephile to track down (it is not available on region 1 DVD and was screened as part of TCM’s tribute to Welles in the early morning).  The film is under an hour, shot in color, primarily in one location.  The modesty of the cinematic canvas that Welles has been given here ultimately limits his ability to investigate these potent themes.  Moreover, the film has a bizarre style to it, with soft-deep focus compositions, awkward dubbing, Erik Satie compositions (many written in the late 1880s) playing over scenes of what appears to be the mid-19^th century and exaggerated and stilted performances.  However, and despite being overshadowed by Arkadin or even F For Fake (1975) with regard to the themes, Welles does manage to embed a sensuousness into the bedroom scene of the film (not too difficult to achieve when you have Jeanne Moreau blowing out candles in the nude, shot from behind a lace curtain) that is almost foreign in his work.  He may be a baroque stylist, but it is both odd and extremely satisfying to see those qualities deployed in an alluring sense.