320 - The Immortal Story, France, 1968. Dir. Orson Welles.
The wilderness and the solitary places shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom, and sing even with joy, and . . . Strengthen ye the weak hands. Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, "Behold, your God will come with a recompense, and in the wilderness shall waters break out." - Isaiah 35.
And again--
In the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool.
Behold, your God will come with a recompense, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the eyes of the blind shall be opened.
This story is a story of stories.
Mr. Clay wants to hear a story. Levinsky tells Mr. Clay his story. Poland. Pograms.
Then Levinsky tells Mr. Clay Isaiah's story.
Mr. Clay does not like Isaiah's story.
Prophecies!
Mr. Clay does not want to hear prophecies.
So Mr. Clay tells his story to Levinsky. A rich old gentleman drove up in his horse and carriage and offered a poor young sailor five guineas to come home with him.
Levinsky knows the story. He can finish it. He informs Mr. Clay that his story is a story told by sailors in many ports.
When the poor young sailor arrives at the rich old man's house, the rich old man informs him that he wants to leave an inheritance but has no offspring. So the rich old man pays the poor young sailor to impregnate his wife so that he may have a son and leave his inheritance to him.
Mr. Clay decides to enact his story. He is a rich old man. He has no offspring. He has no wife. He can hire a poor young sailor and a beautiful young woman to provide him with a son so that he may leave his inheritance to him.
Levinsky is sent to hire the people to enact Mr. Clay's story. Along the way, he hears other stories.
The people on the street tell their stories of Louis Ducrot. Mr. Clay's old business partner. He has died. Committed suicide. Mr. Clay must have driven him to it. There was a daughter someplace.
The people on the street are on the streets of Macao. An island. Macao is in China but it is Portuguese.
Mr. Clay has a magnificent house in Macao. "And a splendid equipage." That would be a horse and carriage. "And he sat in the midst of both, erect, silent, and alone."
Virginie Ducrot tells her story to Levinsky. She tells him other stories. Several stories.
Virginie Ducrot is the someplace daughter of Louis Ducrot. Levinsky just happens to be recruiting her to enact Mr. Clay's story.
She grew up in that home. That house where Mr. Clay now lives. She has longed to enter it again.
She will enter it again.
Mr. Clay drives his carriage--or is driven in it--to a road on a lonesome side of town. He meets a poor young sailor and offers him five guineas to come home with him.
Levinsky goes to Virginie's place--a tired room with a sad view of the lonesome side of town. He offers her 300 guineas to come to Mr. Clay's home. Three hundred because she demands it. It is her final price to satisfy an old debt--the amount her father owed Mr. Clay over which he ruined him.
The two actors arrive at the house. Separately.
Eventually, they enact Mr. Clay's story.
The Sailor, Paul, has never slept with a woman before. He is seventeen. He has been away at sea for so long--and was stranded on an island for a year--that he has hardly been around women.
Virginie has slept with many men.
"The earth trembled and shook at the loss of my innocence."
Later she asks, "Don't you feel the earthquake?"
The two are paid. Paul goes. Virginie stays. Mr. Clay dies.
Mr. Clay drops the seashell as Mr. Kane dropped the snow globe.
Levinsky comments.
"He's been waiting at sunrise to drink the cup of his triumph. But the cup has been too strong for him."
It is short (58 min.), small (in a small town, then inside the house), quiet, and filled with artistry.
He revels in the textures of the city streets, ripped sailboat sails, hanging clothes, signs, walls, tapestries, furniture, glassware, pouring wine, flowers, vases, the plaster, the gravel, the mud.
He frames the film to perfection, with every frame a Welles. He lights it with brilliance.
We are told that The Immortal Story has influenced quite a few film directors, including Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence), Stanley Kubrick (Barry Lyndon), Raul Ruiz, and Manoel de Olivera.
In the end, Mr. Clay gets what he wants. An immortal story. A story without an author. A story that belongs to everybody. A story that never ends.
And yet, does he not ironically transform his story into a prophecy?
Something he claims he does not like.
A story that predicts the future. A future that really happens.
Because he makes it happen.
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