The Other Side of the Wind

Dir: Orson Welles

2018

*****

Orson Welles is, of course, one of the most famous and infamous film makers to have ever lived. However, as well known as his unfinished film was (which wasn’t really that much), I’m not sure there were many who really wondered about what it could have been. It was essentially just another forgotten film. The thing is, all the footage was captured, Welles started shooting The Other Side of the Wind  in 1970 following Welles' return to America after two decades living abroad, and resumed on-and-off until 1976. Welles continued to intermittently work on the project into the 1980s, but it became embroiled in legal, financial, and political complications which prevented it from being completed. Welles died in 1985. Many a producer, director and actor has tried to get permission and financial aid to get the film finished but all of them have failed – until now. Director, and star of the film, Peter Bogdanovich was integral in keeping the idea alive and thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign enough money was raised to have it completed. I was one of the people who crowd funded it and I have to say it has been the most poorly handled campaign I have ever had the misfortune to be involved with. The film was released on Netflix long before I was given my promised perks – in fact I am still waiting. 5 updates in 4 years is poor form and not hearing a thing for 18 months is why I lost a certain amount of enthusiasm for the project because I don’t think it is entirely about saving a film out of passion – people got paid. Anyway, I digress. The film is a giddying film-within-a-film mockumentary, a satire of both the passing of Classic Hollywood and of the avant-garde filmmakers of Europe and New Hollywood in the 1970s. Had it been finished and released I doubt Robert Altman’s The Player or Woody Allen’s Celebrity would have been half as popular or even made for that matter. I think I will always love Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore the most when it comes to the film-within-a-film format but The Other Side of the Wind does feel like a lost classic. The film opens by describing the final day of Jake Hannaford, an aging Hollywood director who was killed in a car crash on his 70th birthday, Hannaford is played by John Huston and is modeled on Ernest Hemingway. Welles denied speculation that the character was based on himself or Huston, although he noted that there were elements of early Hollywood directors with macho reputations, such as Rex Ingram, John Ford, Raoul Walsh and William A. Wellman. The film is largely narrated by an elderly Brooks Otterlake. Peter Bogdanovich plays Otterlake, a protégé of Hannaford's who is now a commercially successful director in his own right, and who has a talent for mimicking celebrities. The character has many parallels with Bogdanovich himself, who took over the role after the departure of comedian Rich Little. Just before his death, Hannaford was trying to revive his waning career by making a flashy film, laden with gratuitous sex scenes and violence, with mixed results. At the time of Hannaford's party, this film (titled The Other Side of the Wind) has been left unfinished after its star stormed off the set, for reasons not immediately apparent to the audience. A screening of some incomprehensible parts of Hannaford's unfinished experimental film take place, in order to attract "end money" from studio boss Max David. Hannaford himself is absent, and a loyal member of his entourage, the former child star Billy Boyle (Norman Foster), makes an inept attempt to describe what the film is about. Intercut during this, we see various groups setting out for Hannaford's seventieth birthday party at an Arizona ranch. Hannaford arrives with a young Brooks Otterlake, a commercially successful director with a talent for mimicking celebrities, who credits much of his success to his close study of Hannaford. Many journalists attending the party brandish cameras, and shoot out invasive questions, eventually querying Hannaford's sexuality and whether he has long been a closeted homosexual, in spite of his macho public persona. Hannaford has a history of seducing the wife or girlfriend of each of his leading men, but maintains a strong attraction to the leading men themselves. Several party guests comment on the conspicuous absence of John Dale (Bob Random), Hannaford's leading man in his latest film, whom Hannaford first discovered when Dale was attempting suicide by jumping into the Pacific Ocean off the Mexican coast. As the party proceeds, Hannaford finds out that Dale's suicide attempt had been faked, and that he had actually set off to Mexico to find Hannaford. Meanwhile, guests are shown more scenes from the film at the ranch's private cinema. One scene makes it clear why Dale left the film - he stormed off the set in anger, in the middle of a sex scene in which he was being goaded by Hannaford off-screen. As the party continues, Hannaford gets progressively drunker. He is washing his face in the bathroom when he tearfully breaks down in front of Otterlake, asking for the young director's help to revive his career. A series of power outages in the middle of Hannaford's party interrupts the screening. The party continues by lantern-light, and eventually reconvenes to an empty drive-in cinema, where the last portion of Hannaford's film is screened. Having realized at the party that Otterlake is not going to financially support Hannaford's new film, the two have a mournful last exchange in the drive-in theatre, realising that their friendship is at an end. Intrusive journalist Juliette Riche has asked Hannaford the most explicit questions of all about his sexuality. At this moment, Hannaford violently assaults Riche in anger, while a drunken Billy Boyle mounts an impassioned defense of the director. Susan Strasberg plays Riche, a savage film critic who was a thinly veiled swipe at Pauline Kael, with whom Welles was in a public feud with over her (later discredited) allegation that he hadn’t written Citizen Kane. As dawn breaks, Hannaford drives back to the ranch house, in the sports car he had intended to give to Dale as a gift. At the ranch, Dale is walking around the mostly empty house, having only just arrived the morning after. A drunken Hannaford asks him to get in the sports car with him, but Dale does not. Hannaford drives away, leading to his fatal car accident. Meanwhile, Hannaford's symbolic film finishes screening to a now-almost-empty drive-in theatre. The only person still watching is the actress who starred in it. She watches the final scene, and drives off as Hannaford's closing narration says: "Who knows? Maybe you can stare too hard at something, huh? Drain out the virtue, suck out the living juice. You shoot the great places and the pretty people, all those girls and boys - shoot 'em dead." It’s a great satire but also very close to the truth for so many directors, actors and journalists over the years. The editing is about as snappy as it gets, which is a little dizzying at times but it works perfectly. It’s Altman on speed. The experimental film-within-a-film is a spoof of European arthouse cinema and is the only part of the film that feels dated. The film itself is very of its time and isn’t beyond parody, so much of the fake film feels contemporary compared. Indeed, it actually looks like it could have been a good film, with Oja Kodar stealing every scene she’s in. The parody element is quite confusing really as the overall film is a clear copy of the sort of thing many of the European directors mocked had already done. Claude Chabrol was clearly game for a laugh and appeared as himself but if I was Fellini, Malle or Truffaut I’d be either be pissed off with Welles or maybe laugh it off as nonsense. I do wonder what Jean-Luc Godard thinks of it, assuming he’s seen it. I enjoyed it for the satire but overall I loved it as a time piece. Here we have amazing lost footage of some of cinemas greatest personalities who have long departed this earth. John Huston, Susan Strasberg, Tonio Selwart, Lilli Palmer, Edmond O'Brien, Cameron Mitchell, Claude Chabrol, Dennis Hopper and Paul Mazursky to name just a few, plus many great performances from younger versions of great film makers still with us. The story is essentially a combination of two ideas. It evolved from an idea Welles had in 1961 after the suicide of Ernest Hemingway. Welles had known Hemingway since 1937, and was inspired to write a screenplay about an aging macho bullfight enthusiast who is fond of a young bullfighter. Nothing came of the project for a while, but work on the script resumed in Spain in 1966, just after Welles had completed Chimes at Midnight. Early drafts were entitled Sacred Beasts and turned the older bullfight enthusiast into a film director. The film is about Hemingway and Welles. Over the years, while the film's negative remained sealed in a Paris vault, several production members expressed frustration at their inability to see the film - Tonio Selwart, for instance, was in his late 70s when he acted in it, and considered it his "swan song" from acting. Even in 1992, at the age of 95, he regretted that he would probably never see it - not only because of his age but because of his gradual loss of sight. He would die in 2002, aged 106, still having never seen the film or his performance in it. It’s very sad and something of a privilege to see finished all these years later. Many of the cast and crew worked for free, or for low wages, or in exchange for favours from Welles. Huston, a close friend of Welles, worked for the nominal fee of $75,000 - some of which is still owed to his estate, after one of the film's producers embezzled part of the budget. Welles said he could not afford to pay his cinematographer Gary Graver, so instead gave him his 1941 Academy Award statuette for the script of Citizen Kane by way of thanks. McBride's salary comprised two boxes of cigars. In some respects the story behind the film is actually more interesting than the film itself but I do believe that had it been completed and released back in the 70s it would now be regarded as a classic. It is Welles at his most playful and his most indulgent, watching it now is like travelling through time, a unique treat and something to treasure.