In 1985 cinema legend Orson Welles passed away, leaving behind a huge body of work that earned him the label of one of the best film directors to have ever graced the art form. He also left behind more than one unfinished project, including a sort of experimental faux documentary about filmmaking titled “The Other Side of the Wind”. Welles had returned to Hollywood in 1970 after a decade of living in Europe. He had the perfect story: the last day in the life of an acclaimed film director as he tries to comlete one last film. The film’s troubled production had to deal with many financial and legal setbacks, had to be suspended and resumed several times, and at the time of Welles death hundreds of hours had been shot over the course of many years, of which only a small portion had been edited. Since then many attempts had been made to finish the project and now, finally after so many years full of shortcomings and legal disputes, Orson Welles’ final masterpiece has been released to the public.

Jake Hannaford (John Huston) was considered to be the “Ernest Hermingway of cinema”. He died on a car accident the day after his birthday, a day in which he showed an unfinished version of his latest film, “The Other Side of the Wind”, at the party. The film tells the story of this day, in particular of the events of the party. Shot in a sort of documentary style, through the lenses of several interviewers and party attendees, we get an insight into the Hannaford’s life and the people around him, including his protegé directors, actors, film critics, students, etc. We also get to see sequences of the eponymous film, which follows a young man (played in the film within the film by an actor named John Dale (in turn played by Bob Random), with whom Hannaford has had a rocky relationshi with and who walked out of the project in the middle of production) as he obsseses over a mysterious and sensous woman (Oja Kodar). The film has little narrative coherence, no dialogue at all and lots of nudity.

“The Other Side of the Wind” is a difficult film to talk about. It stylistically resembles Welles’ previous documentary “F for Fake” (1973), but its more complex in terms of the story it tells. I get the feeling that multiple viewings are needed to really start to grasp everything that’s going on here, but I will try my best to give my thoughts on this after just one single viewing.

The most obvious starting point is the similarities between Welles himself and Hannaford. He stated more than once that the film wasn’t autobiographic, but there’s no denying that the author and the character have more than a few things in common. Both were hailed as masters, both had complicated relationships with producers and actors, both struggled to complete their films and achieve their visions. If there’s something I got about Hannaford is that he felt lonely and misunderstood, feelings that no doubt were known to Welles throughout his career. Scenes in which critics and students speculate about his motivations behind his work, or at the beginning as he is borderline harrassed by “biographers” who claim to know everything about him, it all seems to be very overwhelming. Huston, who was a celebrated director himself and most certainly knew those sorts of feelings, perfectly portrays the sense of sadness and loneliness that seems to drown Hannaford. His dominant, macho personality may be rooted in the ideals of the time, but there’s a true sesibility and fragility behind it.

Another interesting aspect is the character of Juliette Riche, played by Susan Strasberg, a film critic modeled after real-life critic Pauline Kael. Kael wrote a lot about auteur-theory and openly critized Welles, who felt ersonally attacked after her essay “Raising Kane” was released. Riche plays a similar role in Hannaford’s story: she’s basically the only one to directly confront him about certain aspects of his life that seem to affect his pictures. Her character serves as a foil of some sort to Hannaford’s self-indulging melancholy, as if her bluntness helps him, the guests and the audience realize the hypocrisy of the director. Other cast members worth mentioning are Peter Bogdanovich as a once-student of Hannaford who has become a succesful director himself and Oja Kodar as the enigmatic actress who doesn’t utter one single line of dialogue in the movie and yet her presence is simply intoxicating. And a little fun fact: directors such as Dennis Hopper, Claude Chabrol and Curtis Harrington all appear as themselves.

Aesthetically speaking, the film looks and feels like a 70s New Hollywood movie (for obvious reasons). It has the sensation and texture of one of cinema’s greatest periods, something that has been sadly missing in the decades since. The aspect ratio, the grainy cinematography that goes back and forth between colour and black and white, a sound design that had to be redone and salvaged for its release, every technical element is very accomplished. Credit has to be given to the producers, Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza, who oversaw the restoration of the footage and the completion of the film’s post-production.

The film within the film poses a very interesting object of analysis, albeit an elusive and very cryptic one. It features mainly two actors chasing after each other, most of the time they are naked and engage in sexual acts. It is cut in a very avant-garde style, but there’s very little story to recognize beyond “two naked people run after one another through various locations”. Apparently, Hannaford is trying to make a flashy, gratiutous film to revive his career, but his artistic sensibilities seem to prevent this. Personally, I would have liked to know a little bit more about the rest of Hannaford’s filmography to be able to compare his latest movie with his previous works, perhaps it would’ve been easier to extract some insight then. But it was never supposed to be easy. All the chasing, the sex and the recurrent flashes of violence may represent more than just an effort to make something striking, but rather the chaos of his world and the futility of trying to grasp and possess something that is so clearly unpossessable.

Now, the question that remains is: how close or far is the final film to Welles’ original vision? It is hard to speculate here, and the truth is that we’ll never find out. The final product followed his notes, scripts and directives, but a lot certainly didn’t got exactly as Welles intended it to. But is that a bad thing? No, not at all. It is definitely a pity that he couldn’t oversee the completion of this dream project of his, but I believe we have to consider ourselves lucky to finally be able to watch this completed work of art. Now, the fact that it was released by Netflix is kind of bittersweet: sure, we get to see watch it as much as we want within our own convenience not having to pay extra for it, but it is kind of sad that it was never released in theaters (save for a few exceptions), which was of course Welles’ original intent.

Like I said, this is a difficult film to talk about and it requires multiple viewings to really (begin to) understand what it was all about. Maybe in the future I’ll do a revised review after I’ve seen at least three or four more times, maybe then my perception may have changed. Anyway, “The Other Side of the Wind” is a very multi-layered piece of filmmaking about filmmaking, about an artist in decline facing his final challenge before passing away. It tells a story that hits way too close home for the director and main actor, a story that very subtly and in a nuanced way tackles both the specific and the universal, the toll of the artist and the weight of existence. We’re lucky that we finally got a finished version of the film, even if it wasn’t exactly what Welles had intended. It is, without a doubt, another worthy addtion to the filmmaker’s illustrous ouvre.

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