The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

The Other Side of the Wind (2018), directed by Orson Welles, written by Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, starring John Huston, Oja Kodar, Peter Bogdanovich

It might be, that the story of how the last, big movie of Orson Welles, often cited as the director of the greatest movie ever made, finally got released in some form through Netflix, over 30-years after it was filmed, is more interesting than the movie itself is. There is a making-of documentary about the movie, called They'll Love Me After I'm Dead so you can decide yourself which is more entertaining: the last days of an ageing director Hannaford (Huston) or the real-life exploits of Welles in trying to secure funding in the new, late 1960's Hollywood.

The story itself is seemingly simple. During his birthday party, Hannaford is screening scenes of his new movie, called The Other Side of the Wind, to his doting fans, media and potential investors. This all is shown in a semi-documentary form gathered from the material, as the opening narration Otterlake (Bogandovich) states it, shot during the event by several different people.

During the party, Hannaford gets drunker and drunker and the truths and the conversations turn from prickly to downright hostile. Everyone gets a piece from the darkening mood of the director, who knows his latest movie isn't getting the backing he thinks it deserves. Not even his disciple, younger and now more successful director, Otterlake is safe.

The movie itself Hannaford is showing is a storyless mess strung together from different pieces, where two actors, Pocahontas (Kodar) and John Dale (Robert Random), chase each other in a wordless chase. It has little rhyme or reason to, displayed as a work of an old director, who is trying to understand what is considered good among the new blood of Hollywood.

While the clips are something that goes down well with the doting fans, none of the financers is that happy with it, especially when Hannaford doesn't even have a script and has managed to piss off the lead actor as well. So it isn't only about the money, it is also about the uncertainty of if there is a lead actor anymore.

The movie Hannaford is trying to make is left unfinished, very like the Other Side of the Wind was left unfinished by Welles, when he ran out of money and lost the footage, despite he apparently had shot almost all he needed material under circumstances that mirrored what was happening in the movie as well.

It is really anyone's guess if this version released now is the version Welles would have released himself had he been alive now. It was to be his re-entry to Hollywood after being away for decades, but it ended up not being it and Welles was again drifted away doing other things. And when he died, I guess a lot of chalked the Other Side of the Wind as one of those long-lost movies that'll never see the light of day.  Until now.

While this version apparently is largely composed of the material Welles left behind, there was a rough cut with notes at least, there are some additions, in the beginning at least, that is more recent, especially what comes to Bogdanovich's opening narration that mentions modern things like cell phones. That narration underlines the documentary nature of the footage. I don't know if the death of Hannaford was something Welles was planning to use as a device or not, but that is a device used here as an excuse why the movie is what it is and how it is finally released by someone, who doesn't care anymore if the truth comes out finally.

Welles himself denied that the story was autobiographical despite it is easy to draw parallels to his own career from the setting. An old director trying to make a movie in a system that has turned its back to him. A young director, who was a former disciple of his, is now doing much better while the master has to labour to get things done.

This all mirrors Welles' own career and how he fell from grace in Hollywood after making a string of flops and went to Europe in order to be able to work. Back in Hollywood, his disciple Bogdanovich was a new hot director, who made several hits, becoming a golden boy of sorts for a while. The same story is told in the movie as well, but with seemingly fictitious characters. It isn't Welles himself that is portraying Hannaford, but it is Bogdanovich, who is portraying the young director.

Is The Other Side of the Wind a long-lost masterpiece? Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't, that is for time to show if it'll be forgotten again. It is an interesting tale though, albeit it does at times lack coherency. It has things in it that do feel a bit padded out, but the core story is interesting. The other movie, the one Hannaford is doing, is interesting as well, as it can be seen either as a parody, or a satire, of then-fashionable art movies or just as a failed attempt by an ageing director to do something that would fit in with the new, younger crowd.

We will never know how closely this cut gets to what Welles himself had in mind, as he wasn't that upfront about the matter either. It was largely an experiment for him, an experiment that took years to film and then to edit and cut. Some believe, that Welles would have never released the movie had he not lost the material after failed financial circumstances and that it was always, at least subconsciously, meant as an eternity project.

But however it really was and could have been, this is the version we have now. In all good and bad, this will, most likely, be the version most people that are interested enough will see of the movie. Perhaps, at some point, someone will do more edits of it from the 100 or so hours of material Welles shot for it, but for the time being, this is it.

As I said, there are a lot of interesting things about the movie as well as some that just doesn't quite work. It is somewhat of a raw piece. the biggest question about it really is, would Welles' final version been different from this or not.

Then again, there's no way of knowing that, so if you are not afraid of putting a couple of hours into an experimental, long-lost movie, you'll see something interesting if nothing else.