TOSOTW 7th anniversary

[Wellesnet]

From Wellesnet Facebook:
Seven years ago today, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND debuted in 190 countries before 200 million Netflix subscribers — giving Orson Welles the audience he deserved. Heartfelt thanks to Frank Marshall, Filip Jan Rymsza, Bob Murawski and the late Michel Legrand, Mo Henry and Peter Bogdanovich.

Kimmo Räisänen
A unique film and way ahead of its time, The Other Side of the Wind is still underrated and a worthy bookend of a remarkable career full of cinematic innovation.

Jim Keegan
Watched this for the 3rd time on Netflix the other day. Superb film and gets better with each viewing. Hope there's a blu-ray /dvd release at some point with some of the bonus material mentioned in Joseph Mc Bride's last book, Whatever Happened to Orson Welles.

Martyn Hanson
It was well worth the wait. Shame about the lack of release on Blu Ray

John Burt
As a proud contributor to the Indiegogo campaign that helped jump start this thing, I too hope that Criterion / Netflix releases a 4k of this film. I still remember seeing this at LACMA. I wasn't sure what to expect when I saw it. And I'm still unsure what to think of it but that's not the point. Welles was a true artist. Often maligned for never finishing films. OSOTW redeems him.

Brad Stevens
I long since gave up waiting for a physical media release and ordered the Korean bootleg Blu-ray, which is of excellent quality.

Robert Monell
It's his unapologetic love-hate letter to Hollywood. A letter which got lost in the mail of time. It's not a slick piece of mediocrity. It soars above all that. It's a grand requiem which resists classification. It's experimental, visionary, tragic and only Orson Welles could have made it. Let's treasure it. Joseph McBride should do the commentary track when it finally finds a home on physical media.

Ray Kelly
As I wrote when it was released 7 years ago: If Citizen Kane showed the genius of the “boy wonder,” The Other Side of the Wind is a monument to the heart of a 50-something maverick; unbowed by years of having doors slammed in his face and unafraid to take bold, artistic chances.

Jonny Hainsy
I would love to be able to say it's a great film, or even a fascinating folly - but it remains unwatchable.
As a kid I watched the AFI tribute to Welles (1975). In his acceptance speech the recipient made an open and witty appeal for funding in order to finish "Wind". Then he showed a clip from the unfinished film and even at my age I was aghast at how shoddy and amateurish it looked: the dim photography, the hit or kiss acting, the poor sound synchronisation and that the clip isn't even amusing.
The contrast between this turgid 'home movie' and the incredible clips already shown from "Citizen Kane", "The Lady from Shanghai" and "The Chimes at Midnight" was both embarrassing and pitiful. Why would anybody in that room or anywhere in Hollywood pony up to finish such a debacle with zero chance of making a profit?
I had hoped that with the belated revival of "The Other Side of the Wind", somebody, somehow had ruthlessly cut, reshaped and frankly rescued the footage to make something out of nothing. Sadly, it's still nothing...

Nick Nack Paddywhack
Bro, it’s supposed to look like a home movie because it’s a found footage movie taken in-universe from material shot by amateur film students.

Jonny Hainsy
So, you're saying Welles did the smart thing showing that clip at the AFI awards?

Steve Paradis
Yes, it's a chaotic mess, but then how do you do justice to late 60's Hollywood otherwise?

Ron Ford
An amazing film, nothing else like it.

Mark Sprecher
I had the privilege of being a production assistant/errand boy for Mr. Welles during the late summer and autumn months of 1975 when he was in residence at Peter’s house and was editing both “Filming Othello” and some of what was available to him of “The Other Side of the Wind”. It was a wonder to be in the editing room (Peter’s screening room) watching him work on the film-within-a-film bathroom orgy, frequently finessing it by removing just a few frames within shot after shot to get the rhythm he wanted. To my mind the team that completed the movie was essentially channeling Mr. Welles as if he were guiding them from the great beyond. Seeing this best effort to complete the movie after so many decades was a dream come true.

[JasonH]

Still an uppercut of a movie with more to offer than could ever be taken in during the first or fifth viewing. The hard part – getting it to exist – is accomplished. Now let’s see about getting it in my physical library. Netflix, always remember that your heart is God’s little garden.

[Le Chiffre]

You're right, Jason. I've seen the film about twelve times now, and although I like it a lot and am ecstatic that it's finally completed, I'm still not sure exactly what (or all) it's trying to communicate. Maybe Welles (and Oja?) wanted it that way. To me, the film's mysterious, multi-faceted subtext is as intriguing, if not more so, than the surface text. A leading Welles scholar told me that one could write an entire book about the symbolic meaning of the last scene alone. It's an experimental, challenging, and sometimes messy film that, as indicated by Rotten Tomatoes, obviously appeals to critics and scholars more than general audiences, as typified by the guy above who complained about too much of it looking like a home movie. As another guy above pointed out, it IS in large part a home movie. An obscure art movie inside of a home movie.



So what is the multi-faceted subtext? I made a list and have come up with about 30 possibilities so far. One of the main ones, obviously, would be the whole Native American angle, which Oja Kodar said, in her 2015 Woodstock interview with Jonathon Rosenbaum, inspired her to write a short story called THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, about an abused Native American man. Since Oja is said to have created the title F FOR FAKE, it's not hard to imagine Welles letting her create the title for this one too.