1. The Immortal Story: 1966: When Kurant met Welles, the latter was wearing pink lounging pajamas and smoking a cigar; (that's some image!).
2. They made The Immortal Story for TV, not for the cinema: Kurant suggested using "Colortran", a system which brought out very rich colours, since TV tubes weren't very sensitive then, and colour nuances weren't possible.
3. Twice there was a mistake made with the filming, but both times Welles thought the results were wonderful.
4. Either Welles or Kurant were always first on the set, as both were worried they would sleep in.
5. Welles often improvised and asked Kurant to film something unscheduled.
6. They not only used a large camera, but very small ones too; as Kurant writes; "I worked less often with a heavy camera than with a light French one, the Cameflex, the favorite of the New Wave...it was the only camera that allowed Welles- who had a very large head- to look in the viewfinder, since it was extendable and could be pulled out to the side." [ Tony note: Kurant was the DP for Godard's "Masculin, féminin".]
7. Kurant had a Triumph sports car, a very small car, which Welles asked to drive: unfortunately, he couldn't get out of it, and a grip had to unscrew the seat. However, Welles laughed the loudest and with good nature.
8. In Madrid and Chinchon it was often minus 3 or 4 degrees, so Welles would suck on ice cubes so his breath wouldn't show on film.
9. In Macao, some of the equipment, such as the truck and dolly, arrived late, so they shot using hand-held cameras.
10. Kurant convinced Welles that substituting a 150 mm lense for tracking shots from a camera truck would work, even though Welles had never used anything higher than a 32 mm previously. Welles was "...a little worried at first but he ended up really liking the impression of speed and the stroboscopic effect."
11. When they were shooting scenes with Welles in them, they would set them up with a double sitting in for him, and they would measure everything carefully; however, as Kurant notes: "... It cracked us up that no matter what measurements were taken, we never ended up with the same results."
12. Welles never knew his lines, so cards and blackboards were used with his lines on them: "Welles would often screw up his eyes onscreen, which actually meant he was looking at the cards. It was extraordinary!"
Here's some images:
Here are Welles in costume and Kurant behind a rather small camera:
Here's an interesting shot of Welles and Moreau on the set with a huge camera:
This is the cover of the Spanish press book for The Immortal Story; note that it was shown along with the Francois Reichenbach documentary "Portrait of Orson Welles" (which won the Berlin Film Festival's best short film award), and also that Welles is depicted out of makeup, apparently directing, making for an interesting synthesis of the meaning of the story and Welles's life as a director:
Here's a rare poster from Argentina (!), dated 1969: in the bottom right corner is a picture of the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear, which the film was in competition for, but didn't win:
Here's a gorgeous shot of Kurant's:
13. The Heroine: another Dinesen story: I've always read there was to be a trilogy, but Kurant reveals that Welles was only going to film The Heroine as a 30 minute film meant to be a companion piece to The Immortal story, so together they would make a feature film: this was in 1969, a year after Immortal had already been shown on French TV. The Heroine was to be shot in Budapest and starrring Oja Kodar. They began filming just before Easter, and a prologue was shot featuring two English actors; here's a couple of stills, remarkably reminiscent of Ambersons:
And here's a shot of Welles on the Heroine set:
Unfortunately, the state-run film company was charging outrageous fees; Welles discussed this with Kurant and made the latter the new poduction manager on the spot! When they stoppped for a 3 day break for Easter, Kurant saw Welles on the stairs of the hotel one evening, and Welles mysteriously said "Don't call me, I'll call you." Then, he dissappeared. Nobody knew where he had gone, and for two days everyone was in a panic; finally, the hotel manager broke down the door to Welles's room, thinking that perhaps he had died. As Kurant write: "His bags were gone; he had cleared out...I became hostage to a crew of 80, and hadn't a clue how to pay the hotel bill or anything else." Then a few days later, at midnight, Welles's secretary called Kurant, and told him that Welles was waiting for him: in Vienna! A plane ticket was waiting, and Kurant "discreetly fled" the scene. The next day when his plane landed, Welles was waiting, "fresh as a daisy" and took Kurant out for a dinner of boiled beef.
14. The Deep: I'd always heard that the Deep was filmed from 1967-69, but Kurant says it was filmed in 1969 and 1970, though he wasn't there for the second part of the shoot.
15. When they started filming, neither Moreau or Kurant had read the script.
16. Welles had just acted in The Battle of Neretva, which was made in Yugoslavia, and "instead of being paid a salary, he asked for the equivalent in production costs for a film he wanted to film there":The Deep.
17. All the eqipment and technicians were supplied by the Yugoslav film company: "Only Oja, Jeanne, Orson and I came from Paris."
18. Somewhat obliquely, Kurant writes: "We shot very little. What I saw of it in Los Angeles wasn't very impressive."
19. Later Welles asked Kurant which filter he had used on some shots of Moreau; he told Welles it was "...a piece of sheer black nylon stocking, number 5, from Dior!"
20. One day Orson's secretary left the script on the side of the boat, and Jeanne read it: "She realized her role wasn't as big as Oja Kodar's. So the work stopped for one day while the two actresses spoke via their agents!" [Tony note: and Welles and Moreau, who has done such wonderful work together on The Trial, Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story, never worked together again. Welles wrote a part for Jeanne in The Other Side of the Wind, but she declined.]
21. Kurant says he had to leave the production for another project, so he didn't shoot Oja's scenes.
Here's a nice shot of Welles, Moreau, actor Michael Bryant and Kurant on the boat, apparently discussing the script; Welles is telling Moreau: "Really, Jeanne, it's a small, but crucial role"; Moreau isn't buying it:
22. Production stopped for a while, and then started up again (it seems in 1970). However, Kurant was again busy, and could not participate. Six years later, Welles suddenly called Kurant and said: 'Can you come by the day after tomorrow to match up some shots for The Deep?" but Kurant again had to decline, as he was working on another picture. [Tony note: This is interesting, because this was the Gary Graver era.]
23. Years later, Welles called Kurant to work on "...some films on magic in the United States, but they were never made."
24. Kurant was very impressed by Welles's method of working: "The major difference between a great 'visual' director, like Orson, and some other directors is that the first type is open to discussion; they don't complicate things or bury you in visual theories...Welles had a very personal sense of composition: the foreground in a Welles film looks nothing like anyone else's. I loved his intuitive way of working. For almost all great directors, at the last minute intuition overrides planning."
25. Very interestingly, Kurant concludes with this statement:
Later on Welles "...got caught up in another system and started making films in 16mm. I think I was one of the last to have worked on his "professional" films (in 35mm with a planned release in theatres), among which you have some unfinished films." [Tony question: were The Other Side of the Wind, F For Fake and Filming Othello shot on videotape, or 16mm? Did Welles never again work in 35mm?]
It should be noted that this article is an English translation (dated Dec. 2001) of a French article. :;):
