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The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 1975/2018)
🕑 Added 2018-12-12 02:34:45 +0000 UTC
Could this possibly be more interesting than an officially "completed" version by Welles? It's hard to say exactly how close this is to the director's vision, although expects seem to believe it's awfully darn close. But this is above all a film about art in jeopardy, about compromise, and about self-consuming artifacts of the implacable Hollywood machine. In a sense, its damage is a badge of honor. It wears Welles' failure to close on its sleeve.
It's not just on the thematic level, although the titular opus by Jake Hannaford (John Huston) is clearly meant to be a self-deceptive boondoggle. Occupying the not-so-sweet spot where Antonioniesque pretention collides with exploitation titty-flix, the Oja Kodar starrer within the film is all hippy posing and stolid sexlessness, a stone bore guaranteed to ruin its maker. (The fact the Kodar's actress character is cast as Native American only points to Welles' mockery of the 60s and its notions of authenticity, the idea that anyone could exist in America unscathed by greed and debauchery.) In its ramshackle form as well, Other Side feels held together with tape and time. Mismatched reaction shots with different film stocks tell a sordid tale of production, but provide a splendid avant-garde ambiance.
But then there's the speed of the thing, the editing and performance pace that gives the impression (at least until the comparably languid party sequence) that Hannaford generates biblical weather around him at all times, reporters and acolytes and suck-ups and hangers-on. It's Welles in Fellini mode, and it works like gangbusters, making the old New Hollywood feel electric, exhausting, and a bit sickening. Hannaford may be a phony, but his craggy old visage, and what today would be a Cialis-assisted, world traveler of a member, make him the realest thing around for miles. Who wouldn't follow him into battle? Better than getting left behind.
