(Editor’s note: The Italian film magazine Cabiria has pulled together reflections from a dozen Orson Welles scholars across the globe to mark the one-year anniversary of The Other of the Wind. Cabiria has kindly allowed us to run English translations of several essays. In this installment, Wellesnet’s Ray Kelly shares his thoughts.)
Reflections on the brave, daring The Other Side of the Wind
By RAY KELLY
I have lost count of how many times I have watched The Other Side of the Wind, which had its gala premiere on August 31, 2018 at the Venice Film Festival.
My first viewing of footage edited by Bob Murawski took place at the Tribeca West post-production facility in Los Angeles in December 2017. I soaked in every moment and listened intently as Murawski, producers Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza, and executive producer Peter Bogdanovich spoke about the work still to be done.
Less than a year later, on a late summer afternoon, I sat enraptured in an empty Greenwich Village theater for a private screening of the completed film, graciously arranged by Netflix. I drew a deep breath as I heard Bogdanovich intone, “That’s the car, what was left of it after the accident — if it was an accident…”
Weeks later, I stood with Orson Welles’ eldest daughter, Chris Welles Feder, and cast members Joseph McBride and Larry Jackson and applauded its triumphant New York Film Festival screening at Lincoln Center.
Those three viewings were unforgettable experiences I will always treasure. A year later, I still feel a thrill every time I watch The Other Side of the Wind, whether it is on a Samsung flat screen television at home or my iPhone in a doctor’s waiting room. I know I am watching Welles’ last masterpiece — his final testament.
Welles, who died in 1985 at the age of 70, was denied the chance to fully edit the film he directed, cast, co-wrote and partially financed for a number of complex reasons. Thankfully, he left behind scripts, notes, audio tapes and 40 minutes of edited footage, which yielded one of his most fascinating, innovative and complex works.
The Other Side of the Wind, begun by Welles as his comeback film in 1970 and completed by friends and admirers 48 years later, is a brutal slap down of both machismo and New Hollywood.
The film takes place at the 70th birthday party of director J.J. “Jake” Hannaford, played by the great John Huston in a performance that rivals his work in Chinatown. The hard-drinking Hannaford is struggling to complete his own comeback film ― a pretentious work full of gratuitous sex and symbolism he hopes will appeal to a younger generation of moviegoers.
This Antonioni-esque footage, gorgeously shot by Gary Graver and featuring Oja Kodar and Bob Random, is mainly seen at the birthday party thrown for Hannaford by friend Zarah Valeska (played by Lilli Palmer). It is attended by successful young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich); members of Hannaford’s inner circle; and an army of film critics, movie freaks and documentarians.
The conceit of Welles’ faux documentary is that is comprised of “found footage” ― mostly hand-held 16mm film shot by partygoers, along with 35mm scenes taken from Hannaford’s never-completed movie. The always ahead-of-his-time Welles was dabbling in the “found footage” genre several years before Cannibal Holocaust and decades ahead of the commercial success of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield.
The Other Side of the Wind is a blend of two movies, each with a unique style that bears little resemblance to earlier entries in the Welles canon. With its quick cuts and cinéma vérité footage The Other Side of the Wind is stylistically closer to Welles’ 1973 essay film F for Fake than his landmark 1941 movie Citizen Kane. However, thematically The Other Side of the Wind recalls his finest work.
The abuse of power always intrigued Welles. Hannaford is a powerful, but flawed, man like Charles Foster Kane or Touch of Evil‘s corrupt cop Hank Quinlan. Hannaford may be a Hollywood legend, but he is also a bully, racist and misogynist. It is ironic the completed The Other Side of the Wind arrived in the midst of the #MeToo movement. Some critics were unnerved that the progressive Welles centered his film on the bigoted Hannaford ― as if they had never encountered a movie with a deliberately unappealing lead character before.
The young man-older man dynamics that fascinated Welles in The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight resurface in the complex relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake. The old filmmaker covets the success enjoyed by Otterlake, who in turn revels in counting the legendary Hannaford as a friend. The one-on-one scenes between Huston and Bogdanovich are the emotional core of The Other Side of the Wind.
The movie has been described by cineastes as a bookend to Citizen Kane since both document the ruin of once powerful man. Citizen Kane revealed the genius of the “boy wonder,” but The Other Side of the Wind is a monument to the heart of an aging maverick; unbowed by years of having doors slammed in his face and unafraid to take bold, artistic chances.
Make no mistake, The Other Side of the Wind with its patchwork style and bitter commentary on a bygone Hollywood era is not for casual filmgoers. In addition, the script’s second half spends more time than needed with superfluous characters, while the Hannaford-Otterlake relationship begs to be further developed. Perhaps, Welles the skilled editor would have recognized and fine-tuned some of the shortcomings of Welles the screenwriter. We will never know.
There were those who argued it might be best if The Other Side of the Wind was left unfinished, even though Welles wanted it completed and chose Bogdanovich to oversee it. Had its negative been left to rot away in a Paris film lab, it would have been a crime against cinema and an insult to those who gave so much to make this film decades ago.
It is worth noting that The Other Side of the Wind was named one of the best films of 2018 by Sight & Sound, The Hollywood Reporter, Film Comment and three dozen other publications. It was honored by several prestigious groups, including the National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and National Society of Film Critics.
The finished film would not exist if not for the Herculean efforts of a dedicated and accomplished post-production team and the deep pockets of Netflix.
Not enough praise can be heaped upon Murawski. The Academy Award winning editor of The Hurt Locker skillfully assembled the pieces of Welles’ cinematic jigsaw puzzle into a cohesive narrative and seamlessly matched Welles’ editing style.
Due to budget constraints, some of Welles’ later projects regrettably have less-than-impressive sound. Thankfully, that was not the case here with Oscar winning re-recording mixer Scott Millan (Apollo 13, Gladiator) and sound editor Daniel Saxlid at the controls. Even with some of the first-generation audio elements missing, Millan and Saxlid did a remarkable job.
Legendary composer Michel Legrand (F for Fake, Thomas Crown Affair) provided a fitting score for the two halves of The Other Side of the Wind: An avant-garde elegy for Hannaford’s never completed comeback movie and jaunty jazz for the party sequences. Recorded months before his death, Legrand demonstrated he had not lost his refined musical taste and talent.
The Other Side of the Wind concludes with four minutes of credits, but the lengthy scroll doesn’t tell the story of why it took more than 40 years for this movie be completed.
No studio, save Showtime, was willing to invest in the project in the years following Welles’ death. Even then, the rights holders ― most notably Kodar, Welles’ longtime companion, and the director’s youngest daughter, Beatrice Welles ― proved to be difficult, if not downright combative, during negotiations.
Against overwhelming odds, Rymsza united the rights held by the Iranian financial backers, Kodar, and Beatrice Welles. It took Rymsza nearly a decade to pull this off. Thankfully, he never gave up.
His fellow producer, Marshall, known for turning out blockbusters like Jurassic World with seeming ease, was a production manager on Welles’ 1970s shoot. There is little doubt that the clout Marshall wields in Hollywood was instrumental in assembling this all-star post-production team and making sure the film was done right.
He and Bogdanovich were best suited to decide how to shape the 96 hours of available footage into something as close as possible to what Welles envisioned in 1976. They worked alongside Welles, knew his intentions, and have proven track records in making successful movies.
Finally, it is impossible to fully thank Netflix, accused by some of being anti-cinema, for spending more than $6 million to complete The Other Side of the Wind.
Netflix, particularly executives Ian Bricke and Ted Sarandos, took a leap of faith and in doing so have rightfully earned their place ― alongside Bogdanovich, Marshall, Rymsza and company ― for making cinematic history.
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