The Immortal Story (1968) (Criterion Collection, 2 DVDs)

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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.

- 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
- Plus: An essay by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum