“The Immortal Story” on DVD

[chrissie]

I'm going to delurk to say thanks for making me aware of this DVD, which I finally got yesterday. I did forget there were two URLs, so I paid the big postage costs from dvd.it -- the reason for the costs is that they use UPS. The disc took only two days to arrive! The total price was slightly more than 20 UKP, which is still a reasonable deal.

As for the film, haven't watched it properly yet. Subtitles = a pain. Picture quality = good. This, and Chimes, are the two OW films I'd never before seen. I got the latter from ebay recently (Spanish version). Really pleased with both; Chimes scores higher for removable subtitles, but IS has better picture. Chimes has very faint, fine vertical banding if you look closely, which surely can't be a characteristic of the original print -- someone correct me if I'm wrong.

OT: does anyone know if any of the UK versions of The Stranger -- there seem to be about four -- are any good? I have the Waterfall release, which is riddled with frame-skips, and at best manages dark grey in lieu in black...

Thanks also for an interesting forum! I don't have much to offer in terms of intelligent insight (I'm in awe of some of the knowledge on display), but it's a great read.

[blunted by community]

welcome, chrissie.

the roan stranger is the best one i've seen.

MGM just released it, i have not seen their disc but some one here posted a site that reviewed the MGM disc, and it was favorable.

if i were shopping for the stranger i would go for the mgm, or roan.

my copy of IS looks great. i can't tell you if it's in synch. i watched maybe 8 minutes, i just popped it in to see how it looked, and i was very surprised, looked great. have not watched any more of it yet, but if it's out of synch it's not any worse than THE TRIAL, or CHIMES.

i have no problem with the synch in CHIMES, or THE TRIAL, but i have heard people complain about both. i always wonder if the versions i have are not as bad as theirs, or if i'm just used to it and don't notice anymore.

being a welles fan makes you tough, you can handle any synching they throw at you.

[R Kadin]

I'm sorry to say it, folks, but The Immortal Story simply doesn't do a thing for me. Its principal accomplishment is to be both precious and banal at the same time - on almost every filmmaking level.

Its poor reception in 1968 was well deserved, IMHO, and it certainly tests the credulity of the saying that even minor Welles is better than the best of many another director. Given the deluge of dreadful directors out there, that ain't saying much in this case.

While I'm pleased to have it rounding out my collection, in the end, it's just downright uninteresting - most especially in a visual sense, which, in Wellesian terms, comes dangerously close to unforgivable. There's not even the slightest hint of having tried hard and failed. Only for the hardiest of the diehards, I'd caution.

OW, man, I loves ya, but even the best have their worst days. Still, it's nice to remember you were, after all, only human. It makes your undeniable triumphs all the more awesome by comparison.

[chrissie]

On synching: I didn't find the sync on either The Trial or Chimes (which I've finally watched properly, and it was brilliant) particularly bad.

I have a question about the sound on these pictures. I'd like to know if I have it right. My understanding: Othello, The Trial and (probably) Immortal Story are all 100% post-synched (dubbed), right? Arkadin seems to have a mixture of live dialogue and dubbing, and Chimes seems mostly live to me--they decided to use Rutherford's live eulogy, for instance, because it couldn't be recreated in the studio (though I assume people like Fernando Rey had to be dubbed over).

Seeing The Trial again recently, now it has a UK release, part of the interest was trying to spot which characters Welles voiced. Of the alleged 11, I only caught two--K's boss and that campy painter fella. Anyone spotted the others? I'm also sure OW voiced Roderigo in Othello.

Enough rambling!

[blunted by community]

i finally watched my copy of immortal story. the brilliance has been sucked out of it. what made it remarkable is what welles did with the lighting, color process, and art direction. My 12th generation copy has all this in it. lesley megahey mentions it in the bbc orson welles story. when i watched the dvd, they did a straight transfer and all the clor stuff welles did is now gone. they did the same thing with othello. othello was beaten with a grey stick and all the gamma tweaking welles did is lost. other films that have suffered the same fate - huston's african queen and reflections in a golden eye, and wyler's dead end.

of all these the only one i never experienced before it was butchered is reflections.

also in one of the ford cavelry pics, wayne is by a river, and they change the exposure from the sky to the river, and not only is the effect gorgeous, but it pushes the story forward. you can see this scene in the ford documentary bogdanovich directed for the afi. when you see it in the movie, none of this is there. wayne just looks at the river and walks away. some restorer thought it was a defect and fixed it.

like hendrix's first album. the company doing the mastering removed the distortion thinking it was a flaw. chas chandler had to send it back with a note telling them to leave the distortion in.

[R Kadin]

Perhaps it's because I am coming to this film for the first time decades after the context in which it first appeared. I don't know. But, if there truly is brilliance worthy of a Welles embedded in this work, even with a more sumptuous colour pallette, clearly it eludes me.

Maybe it's actually a mordant satire of Antonioni, Bergman or Alain Resnais and I'm missing it. On the other hand, maybe it's a tour-de-force expression of existentialism and I just need to make peace with the deadpan and downbeat vibe of that genre. Then again, maybe it was just a modest something to pay the bills that Welles wanted to look better than its minimalist budget ought to have allowed. I'm open to suggestions.

[blunted by community]

i didn't find anything revolutionary in the narrative of IS. what struck me is how it looked. remember the documentary, IT'S ALL TRUE, the few glimpses we get of the color footage welles shot? i've never seen color footage that exciting. it makes you long for the rest of the color clips which they didn't include. IS was on that level. it was a feast for the eyes. the feast is gone now and all that is left is a tv movie.

[AndersE]

I finally got my copy of the Italian DVD and unfortunately I have to side with R Kadin here. It's the only Welles film ever I have not watched in one sitting (it took three!). There were some nice isolated shots, but Welles performance was a big disappointment and I saw nothing of the usual flair in the direction. I'll keep the disk as I wan't to be as complete as possible when it comes to Welles films, but it will take along time before I'll watch it again!
Interesting comments about the colours, Blunted! Would like to know more about that.

Anders

PS. good work getting the board up and running again Jeff. I was beginning to suffer from withdrawal symptoms!

[Christopher]

I remember seeing THE IMMORTAL STORY many years ago during one of the rare times it was shown in a movie theater in Manhattan, and I remember being knocked out by the color. I also enjoyed the dreamy pace, the fairy-tale quality of an otherwise slight and trite story. Why Welles was so in love with Karen Blixen's fiction is one of those mysteries connected with him that I will never understand. In any event -- and someone please correct me if I'm wrong -- I believe THE IMMORTAL STORY was Welles's first color film. As such, it is of interest in his "oeuvre" in the same way that JULIET OF THE SPIRITS is of interest as Fellini's first venture into color film.

[mmrabin]

blunted,

I'd also be interested in hearing more about the grayscale tweaking done to othello and other welles' pix.

what's the scoop?

[R Kadin]

mmrabin - here's a link to a page that provides a few good visual examples of what such tweaking can bring to a finished black-and-white product:
Focus on Imaging

[blunted by community]

that page rkadin posted explains a lot. in welles' time gama tweeking was not a feature. it came about by over exposing when shooting, then experimenting with the processing till you got the desired effect. results vary depending on what you do with the processing, but over exposing film always blows out the grey and bathes the image mostly in black and white. B&W film is very flexible. with still photography I've over exposed b&w film by 5 and 6 fstops, and had the exposure open so long that the subject's breathing would show. the negative was so thick that it took a 20 minute exposure in the processing to get a print. usually the exposure for a print is 4 1/2 seconds to 7 or 8 seconds.

the grey and black became different tones of black, and the whites were glowing, giving the print a dreamy effect. it also blows out a lot of texture. if your subject has pimples on her butt, no problem. all blown out of there.

you can see the way OTHELLO looked in the clips welles used in his film FILMING OTHELLO. the clips welles used are not bathed in grey like the voyager disc is. i think it's in rosabella a camera man quotes welles saying he always wanted "no grey." how they got the grey back in OTHELLO after welles sucked it all out is beyond me, but it was not easy work. they labored long and hard to get rid of the cool look. they just didn't know that is how it's supposed to look.

in the case of the AFRICAN QUEEN, it was called the pastel version. i had a copy of it and didn't know it was supposed to look like that. i rented the tape, left it in my car to do more shopping. when i watched it i was sure i had burned the tape when i left it in my car. then i was all sneaky when i returned it. not till years later did i discover that is how it was supposed to look.

[Tony]

Actually, I'm sure Welles was serious about Immortal Story; as you guys know, Dinesen was his favourite author, and actually he intended Immortal Story to be the first part of a Trilogy ( can't remember what the other parts were to be); the second part was to star Olga Palinkas (AKA Oya Kodar) but they had to stop shooting when the financing fell through. And just watch what Welles did with the Dreamers material to know that he wasn't being ironic or engaging in parody in anyway when shooting either the Dreamers or the Immortal story. As for watching Immortal Story, I constantly surprise myself: I always get trapped in the thing and watch it through the end; I find it very involving, like a myth come alive. It's Arkadin that I now find unwatchable; if it was lost, it's the one film by Welles I surely wouldn't miss: what a god-awful thing it is. He must have been going through some kind of personal crisis, or something. And Stranger is, as Welles admitted, not a project which really captured his imagination. Everything else is, of course, pure genius. IMO

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Aside from Immortal Story, which i haven't seen, and, of course, the reconstructed Other Side of the Wind, Arkadin was the last Welles film I saw - and i loved it.

I think i've written here before, that i'd be damned if i could understand a word of the dialogue, but i thought it was incredible visually. Every single frame was aching with visual brilliance and ingenuity. It was a breathtaking two-hours. The only drawback was the difficulty of understanding the dialogue - and i was transfixed by the visuals anyway, it wasn't like the dialogue mattered!

No, i'm a massive Arkadin fan, i love it! I love how l love its rough edges and low-rent look. The low amount of money Welles has clearly made this for makes the visual delight of it all the more special. I'll watch it again right now!

[Christopher]

I feel compelled to add that much as Welles admired the short fiction of "Isaak Dinensen" (Countess Karen Blixen) and even pretended to be so madly in love with her that he made a special trip to Denmark to meet her, only to think better of it shortly after he arrived, his favorite author was Shakespeare; and I quote the words he wrote as a teenager in his preface to the series of promptbooks for Shakespeare's plays, originally published by the Todd School Press:

"Shakespeare said everything. Brain to belly; every mood and minute of a man's season. His language is starlight and fireflies and the sun and moon. He wrote it with tears and blood and beer, and his words march like heart-beats. He speaks to everyone and we all claim him...."

No one ever said it better, IMO, not even Shakespeare!