Orson Welles Narrates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Experimental Film Featuring the Art of Gustave Doré

Around here we sub­scribe to the the­o­ry that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. In years past, we gave you Welles nar­rat­ing Pla­to’s Cave Alle­go­ry and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” and, before that, the Welles-nar­rat­ed para­ble 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 above.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Cave and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” Two Para­bles of the Human Con­di­tion

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

Orson Welles Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Para­ble About How Xeno­pho­bia & Greed Will Put Amer­i­ca Into Decline (1971)

Who’s Out There?: Orson Welles Nar­rates a Doc­u­men­tary Ask­ing Whether There’s Extrater­res­tri­al Life in the Uni­verse (1975)