The Immortal Story Critical Essay | Critical Essay by William Johnson

Critical Essay by William Johnson

If [The Immortal Story] were signed by an unknown name like Orson Baddeleys instead of Orson Welles, I might (though I hope I wouldn't) credit its faults to the director and its virtues to chance and Isak Dinesen….

Welles's adaptation [of Dinesen's story] is in places oddly careless. (p. 44)

[The] discrepancies blur the impact of the story as Dinesen wrote it, and if Welles's intention was simply to translate the story into cinematic terms he did not achieve a brilliant success. But was that his intention?…

[Right] from the beginning of The Immortal Story I found it casting a spell which its weaknesses failed to break.

The clue to the nature of this spell is in the screen figure of Clay. This is not one of the restless, ironic monsters of past Welles films—a Kane, Arkadin, or Quinlan. In every scene except one Clay remains immobile, rooted in his...
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