Orson Welles Reads Coleridge Poem in Experimental Film

Around here we subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. A few weeks ago, we gave you Welles narrating Plato’s Cave Allegory, and before that the short animated parable/film Freedom River, and the list goes on.

Now, we present The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a 1977 experimental film created by Larry Jordan, an independent filmmaker who tried to marry “the classic engravings of Gustave Doré to the classic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge through a classic narrator: Orson Welles.” As Jordan describes it, the film is “a long opium dream of the old Mariner (Welles) who wantonly killed the albatross and suffered the pains of the damned for it.” You can watch Part 1 above, and then turn to Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

We’ve added this reading to collections of Free Movies Online and Free Audio Books.


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  1. adan barcor says . . . | August 11, 2011 / 7:25 pm

    I beg and ask for pardon as song of …. do not remember… you know more if my father had lovers (amores) as kylie minogue song with kids perhaps witness in mexico try to scold me when my intestee case be in favour of my name please how i will enjoy with wemen guilting my faults father.

  2. Don Molinelli says . . . | August 13, 2011 / 2:21 pm

    Powerful and brilliant.

    Thank you.

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