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.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!