The Immortal Story Blu-ray

Orson Welles’s first color film and final completed fictional feature, The Immortal Story is a moving and wistful adaptation of a tale by Isak Dinesen. Welles stars as a wealthy merchant in nineteenth-century Macao, who becomes obsessed with bringing to life an oft-related anecdote about a rich man who gives a poor sailor a small sum of money to impregnate his wife. Also starring an ethereal Jeanne Moreau, this jewel-like film, dreamily shot by Willy Kurant and suffused with the music of Erik Satie, is a brooding, evocative distillation of Welles’s artistic interests—a story about the nature of storytelling and the fine line between illusion and reality.
 
Film Info
 
France 
1968
58 minutes
Color
1.66:1
French, English 
Spine #831
 
Special Features
 
New, restored 4K digital transfer of the English-language version of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Alternate French-language version of the film
Audio commentary from 2005 featuring film scholar Adrian Martin
Portrait: Orson Welles, a 1968 documentary directed by François Reichenbach and Frédéric Rossif
New interview with actor Norman Eshley
Interview from 2004 with cinematographer Willy Kurant
New interview with Welles scholar François Thomas
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum