"The Other Side of the Wind" Orson Welles: The last film of the classic was shown 33 years after his death
"The Other Side of the Wind" - the last film directed by Orson Welles, who died in 1985, without completing work on it. After 33 years, the picture was finally mounted and released; in November you can watch it on Netflix. I believe that The Other Side of the Wind will go down in film history - not so much because of the merits of the film itself, but because of the fascinating history of its creation.
This picture is a kind of Holy Grail of copyright cinema. Only some believe in its authenticity, while others will endlessly prove that before us is a diligent fake. Well, this is logical in the case of Orson Welles, who ended his career with F for Fake. Moreover, he had to finish it "The Other Side of the Wind". It was completely removed and even partially assembled by the author, but due to problems with producers and financing, she did not see the light either during his lifetime or for more than three decades passed after his death. Now the premiere of the film finally took place at the Venice Festival. Go crazy: in 2018, we are watching a new film Orson Welles. Well, almost new. And almost Wells.
The story “The Other Side of the Wind” draws on a separate book, documentary or series, so retelling it in two words is difficult - but still necessary. Here is how it was. In 1970, Welles — then already recognized and the greatest director in cinema history (the debut film, “Citizen Kane”, was enough for that), and the most unfortunate (most of his projects suffered from arbitrary producers or failed at the box office, many remained unfinished) - he decided to return from Europe back to Hollywood. Of course, not as a tourist: he was going to shoot a new film, on which he had been thinking for a long time and whose script had been rewritten several times. The shooting lasted for several years with interruptions: at first they took place without a budget at all, and when it appeared, they immediately went beyond the established limits.
Then Welles gave up, even though he was hoping to find money to complete the installation of The Other Side of the Wind. He told about it to the right and to the left, including - in speeches of thanks at the presentation of various honorary awards to him. Nobody volunteered to help. According to legend, he took from his pupil and younger comrade Peter Bogdanovich, who himself had by that time become a famous director, a promise: he will finish the picture.
Bogdanovich, by the way, himself starred in "The Other Side of the Wind" in one of the main roles. Of course, he could not resist the temptation to fulfill the will of Orson Welles. In this, he was helped by producers-adventurers who bought with the help of the streaming giant Netflix the footage (about a hundred hours!), The famous editor Bob Murawski (known, in particular, for working on the trilogy Sam Raimi "The Spider-Man" and The Hurt Locker " Kathryn Bigelow), as well as unconditionally great, is still alive and creatively active 86-year-old French composer Michel Jean Legrand, the author of music not only for “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg”, but also for “F for Fake” Welles. His work in the film is the only one that does not cause any questions - the tasteful and ingeniously invented jazz soundtrack simultaneously conveys the spirit of the 1970s and throws a bridge in our time.
So, what is the picture about? Her main plot is a deliberately scruffy and pseudo-documentary 70th anniversary of a fictional great director, a certain Jake Hannaford, who is going to hit Hollywood with his frankly experimental, art-based and filmed in the European manner new film. The first session for friends is held at a birthday party; the scenes from The Other Side of the Wind (meaningless and challengingly pretentious title primarily belongs to the “film in the film”) make up at least a third of the spectacle. That same night, Hannaford dies, sitting behind the wheel of a car drunk.
The role of Hannaford was played by the elderly charismatic classic of Hollywood - unlike Welles, the lucky one and the universal favorite of John Huston. The character is partly inspired by him, partly by another legend, John Ford, and Welles, relying on fate and the image of Hemingway, invented him. At the same time, autobiographical motifs are obvious, that Welles vehemently denied (it is difficult not to recall that he himself died 15 years after the start of filming for The Other Side of the Wind, and he was exactly 70 years old).
Around Huston-Hannaford — a motley crowd of students, fans, friends, acquaintances, and parasites, among whom familiar faces flicker: the same Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg (as a critic), Lilli Palmer, Edmond O'Brien, Dennis Hopper and many others. Moreover, some of the Lilliputians, nudists and a small army of dummies depicting the star of the film shot by Hannaford - they are shot in the course of the action.
Welles conceived “The Other Side of the Wind” as a caustic, evil and uncompromising comedy, the apotheosis of the “fake news” theme and the deceptiveness of appearance, behind which the unknowable and often frightening nature of man is hidden: all of his major works, starting with the sensational radio performance on War of the Worlds and including Citizen Kane. The idea is completely transparent. However, comedy turned drama. Not because Hannaford died (whom he was interested in, after all?), But because the cheeky fascination that characterizes even the unfortunate paintings of Welles, this posthumous work is completely devoid of. He is monotonous, chaotic, full of repetitions, at times simply unintelligible. Moreover, this is despite the fact that the radicalism of the plan and the artistic decision is obvious at first glance. Is the director himself to blame? Alternatively, did Bogdanovich and Murawski misinterpret his idea? Alternatively, is the picture simply outdated over the years lying on the shelf? It is unlikely that there is only one correct answer to these questions. However, it is unpleasant to imagine what eyes the viewer who knows nothing about Orson Wells and the surrounding mythology will watch “The Other Side of the Wind”.
It does not follow from this that "The Other Side of the Wind" was in vain pulled out of nothingness. This is an interesting artifact for research, literally a bottomless well. Film historians and cinephiles will remember the 2018th thanks to this discovery. However, even they are unlikely to deny the obvious: the instructive story of filming, freezing and the subsequent resurrection of the film is much more exciting than himself.
Welles made an experimental, inconceivably innovative film for 1970, disguising it as spontaneous birthday shots: today, in the era of found footage, the then novelty of this decision is hard to feel. He wanted to set it off by imitating a scandalously horrible art film - to distance itself from the festival-cinephile ghetto, to which he had never wished to belong. However, his comedic parody of the mature Antonioni ultimately looks livelier and funnier than the main “The Other Side of the Wind” array.
In contrast to the tedious and colloquial party, filled with lost picks and sociocultural references, the film in the film is silent, colorful and absurdly expressive. His heroes, a beautiful nameless man (Bob Random) and a woman (the last girlfriend and the muse of Welles, the Croat Oja Kodar), abandon civilization and walk around the desert naked, clearly preparing for an inexplicable future apocalypse - a catastrophe, in the face of which you cannot adhere to the civilizations adopted by civilization . Making fun of these two, it seems that Welles is secretly jealous of them. After all, they have the freedom from good taste, common sense and honestly earned reputation, which he himself was deprived of.