The Immortal Story [Histoire immortelle] **** (1968, Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Roger Coggio, Norman Eshley) – Classic Movie Review 2554

Director Orson Welles plays Mr Charles Clay, a rich Portuguese merchant in 19th-century Macao, who tells his clerk Levinsky (Roger Coggio) a true story he heard years before about a rich man who paid a poor sailor five guineas to father a child with his beautiful young wife.

Levinsky says it’s just an old wives’ tale or rather a popular old sailor’s legend. So Mr Clay tests the old seafaring yarn by hiring a virginal young Danish seaman (Norman Eshley) to make love to another clerk’s mistress Virginie (Jeanne Moreau).

Welles scores strongly both as actor, co-writer (with Louise de Vilmorin) and director in this atmospheric, beguiling 1968 adaptation of a novel by Karen Blixen (writing as Isak Dinesen), originally filmed for French TV (ORTF) but given a theatrical release worldwide by Omnia-Film in 1968. It’s just 62 minutes long. It is available on DVD from The Criterion Collection.

Welles planned it as part of an anthology of adaptations of stories by Karen Blixen but they were never made. Alas, it ended up as just another failed project for Welles.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2554

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