Film scholar Massimiliano Studer published a paper in Italy today examining how the creation of the Motion Picture Association of America changed the climate in Hollywood and led Orson Welles to explore sexuality more explicitly with The Other Side of the Wind.
“I started this essay during the writing of my paper presented to a panel on doctoral researches at the Sorbonne Paris III in October 2018,” Studer told Wellesnet. “The text was very popular and my supervisor, Professor Francesco Pitassio (of the University of Udine in Italy), encouraged me to present a version more in-depth at the academic journal Cinergie, published by the University of Bologna.”
He added, “The work of rewriting and revising the text lasted about 14 months. Many people contributed to the revision, including especially Ray Kelly, Joseph McBride and Steven North. Each of the three contributed — giving me suggestions and corrections that led to the current and final draft. Finally, the text was subjected to a strict peer review by Cinergie.”
His paper is entitled, “Welles exploring ‘New Hollywood’ production opportunities: Sex and nudity in The Other Side of the Wind.”
Less than two years before filming began on The Other Side of the Wind, MPAA president Jack Valenti created the now-familiar Rating System so theater owners could indicate to families which films were suitable for children, Studer noted.
“Orson Welles, still self-exiled in Europe, himself wanted to take advantage of the changed climate in Hollywood,” Studer said. “Thanks to the support of his new partner, Oja Kodar, Orson Welles decided that his films would explore sexuality in a more explicit way. Nudity, corporeity, and sex — though already appearing in his previous films — are copiously dealt with in The Other Side of the Wind, whose initial conception and realization was largely due to Oja Kodar. One of the film’s most iconic sequences, the ‘car sex scene,’ features well-known Wellesian techniques as applied to the depiction of dominant female sexuality.”
“I focused my attention on the historical and cultural context in which the New Hollywood developed. Orson Welles began his work on TOSOTW during the early 1970s and the topics of the film reflect the new censorship rules introduced by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1968,” Studer said “The essay is focused on sex and the use of profanity introduced by Welles in the film. In particular, I analyzed the ‘sex in the car scene’ in an aesthetic key. Thanks to the discovery inside the Welles archive of the University of Michigan (a special thanks to Cathrine Benamou and Philip Hallman) of the script of ‘the film within the film,’ I had the opportunity to report in the essay the entire text relating to the aforementioned scene.”
Studer is a PhD student at the University of Udine and his doctoral project is focused on The Other Side of the Wind. He is also co-founder of Formacinema and author of the 2018 book Alle origini di Quarto potere. Too much Johnson: il film perduto di Orson Welles.
He was the first to report that 600 reels of lost Welles footage contained in 13 trunks are now in Gemona. The footage included Too Much Johnson, Don Quixote, In the Land of Don Quixote and Portrait of Gina. He and Alessandro Aniballi, co-founder of Quinlan.it, uncovered the little-known Welles collection at Museo Nazionale del Cinema’s Bibliomediateca Mario Gromo — the multimedia library at the National Cinema Museum in Turin.
The paper, in English, can be read at https://cinergie.unibo.it/article/view/8762/10088
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