Obscure even in Welles' obscure filmography and hardly available anywhere, "The Immortal Story" (1968) is his shortest feature film and would be followed only by "F for Fake" (1974) and "Filming 'Othello'" (1978).
Even Borgesian in its treatment of life and fiction, mirrors become important metaphors right away: the looking glasses brought from France, the mirrors as witnesses to the long- vanished happiness of the Ducrot family, Clay having a mirror in his dining room, him sitting face to face with his portrait; and then, the film becomes a kind of a mirror, which then takes a life of its own when he devices the brilliant fiction in his own life. Quite soon the film and its life become a game of cards, a grand trick of the cosmos. The scene where they bathe in the light is pure magic.
Satie's piano pieces are powerful. Also, I wonder how and whether at all this would have anticipated something in "The Other Side of the Wind"?
Even Borgesian in its treatment of life and fiction, mirrors become important metaphors right away: the looking glasses brought from France, the mirrors as witnesses to the long- vanished happiness of the Ducrot family, Clay having a mirror in his dining room, him sitting face to face with his portrait; and then, the film becomes a kind of a mirror, which then takes a life of its own when he devices the brilliant fiction in his own life. Quite soon the film and its life become a game of cards, a grand trick of the cosmos. The scene where they bathe in the light is pure magic.
Satie's piano pieces are powerful. Also, I wonder how and whether at all this would have anticipated something in "The Other Side of the Wind"?