"The Other Side of the Wind": Orson Welles's Last Film, Seen on a Big Screen
"The Other Side of the Wind" at Netflix/Hope Anderson Productions
Recently I was invited to see "The Other Side of the Wind," the long-awaited final film from Orson Welles. Though it's streaming on Netflix, I was eager to see it as Welles had intended, and where better than at Netflix's beautiful headquarters in Hollywood?
Netflix's pride in "The Other Side of the Wind," was clear from the moment I set foot in the lobby, which is dominated by a giant lighted screen of its poster (as well as a wall dedicated to the season's other prestige project, "Roma"). If someone had told me a year ago that two of the most anticipated movies of 2018 would be black-and-white art films, I wouldn't have believed it, but it's true.
Those who bemoan Netflix's growing clout in movie production should try to imagine any of the old-line Hollywood studios backing a largely unedited forty-year-old experimental film shot on different film stocks in both black-and-white and color. Oh, and with faulty and at times nonexistent sound. None of them would have touched the hundred hours of raw footage with a barge pole, let alone sunk millions of dollars into fashioning it into a film. That project--which took a comparatively fast two years--is detailed in a companion documentary, "A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making." I found as fascinating as the movie itself, and recommend seeing it beforehand.
Editor Bob Murawski discussing the film with Todd McCarthy of the Hollywood Reporter/Hope Anderson Productions
"The Other Side of the Wind" was described by Welles as a painting with a frame around it. The painting is the film directed by the central character, Jake Hannaford (John Huston), while the frame is Hannaford's 70th birthday party, attended by his cast, crew and a group of journalists who attempt to interview Hannaford while filming the goings-on. The cast includes many filmmakers. Some, like Claud Chabrol and Paul Mazursky, play themselves; others, like John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich, have leading roles. The film-within-a-film is silent and plotless but beautifully shot in 35mm Technicolor by Gary Graver, Welles's DP during the 1970's, who didn't live to see his best work on the screen. Jake's story is shot in black-and-white, and the juxtaposition makes "The Other Side of the Wind" seem as if it's set in different eras. While Jake's project is an Antonioni-like art film, Jake's party is vintage Welles: conversations about mortality and sexuality, crowded rooms, shots fired, and--at the end--a death.
Welles was fifty-five when he started filming "The Other Side of the Wind," but it's a young man's movie: messy, brash and uneven. For every gorgeous moment there's one that doesn't work, but this inconsistency gives the film a certain charm. I was thrilled to see John Huston on the screen again; I'd forgotten what a great actor he was. But the film's biggest revelation is Welles himself, a director so ahead of his time that he needed technology that didn't exist to finish his film. If he were alive today, Orson Welles would find Netflix the perfect home for his imagination and ambitions.