The Immortal Story

NOTE: This is a region-1 DVD which requires a region free DVD-player.

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.

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
– PLUS: An essay by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum