Dodging
the studio system regulations to retain final cut, Welles sought financing
independently and his productions often resulted in little snippets of footage
being shot on one or two endless projects over the years. The results of trying to maintain creative
control while pushing the envelope often left Welles scrambling for money and
taking random acting assignments to make ends meet. Welles’ previous project F for Fake, a kind of mockumentary meta-narrative about art forger
Elmyr de Hory, emerged as his last picture he completed on his own as a
director without additional interference and paired Welles with his creative
and personal partner Oja Kodar who functioned as both a screenwriter and the
director’s muse of sorts.
While
working on F for Fake, Welles began
shooting and nearly completing what would soon become the director’s most
legendarily unfinished film production that came very close to completion
initially: The Other Side of the Wind. With principal photography beginning in 1970
lasting until 1976 off and on in the years between, the film was mostly complete
until financing fell through with one of the investors embezzling most of the
budget with some ten hours of raw footage, dailies and outtakes left in the
cans decades after Welles’ death. Over
the next three decades, Welles’ surviving collaborators attempted amid a heated
legal battle with Welles’ estate to finish editing Welles’ footage into a
watchable feature film with Showtime dropping in and out at various points
before Netflix swooped in and with a team of editors to finally bring the many
hours of footage laying around together into a cohesive and coherent feature
film.
An
ensemble semi-autobiographical satirical mockumentary including a film within a
film, The Other Side of the Wind was
to be Welles’ snarky swipe at the current state of the film industry with the
film’s aged late protagonist Jake Hannaford (John Huston) trying to muster up
financing to finish his last film before killing himself in a car crash. Starring many film directors as themselves
including Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom, Claude Chabrol, Paul Mazursky, Cameron
Crowe and Les Moonves, the film presents the same faux documentary narrative
visual style with abstract editing and utilizing various film formats including
color to black and white to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of the machinations
of the late 1960s film industry.
Moreover, Welles expands the visual aesthetic even further by including
alongside the mockumentary narrative a feature film director Jake Hannaford is
working towards completing, shifting aspect ratios and leaping freely between
rough 16mm footage and crisp, colorful 35mm footage.
Essentially
told over the night in the home of Hannaford as he is surrounded by colleagues,
press critics including Susan Strasberg more or less channeling Welles’ arch
enemy Pauline Kael, hippies, groupies, bloodthirsty investigative journalists
and Hannaford’s own closest protégé played by Peter Bogdanovich, The Other Side of the Wind while murky
in motivation provides a glimpse into Welles’ outlook on the state of the film
industry surrounding him at the time.
Pitting the so-called ‘Old Hollywood’ of tyrannical filmmaking dinosaurs
against the ‘New Hollywood’ of young idealistic go getters, Welles’ protagonist
played with typical John Huston gusto more or less provides the film with a
megaphone for Welles to speak his own misgivings, fears and desires about his
place in the film industry directly to the audience.
Seen
decades later with the surviving footage assembled together following Welles’
production notes, the film plays like a more user-friendly F for Fake as well as a confessional for Welles to vent out his own
misgivings about the studio system and all the bells and whistles that come
with it. The average viewer with Citizen Kane fresh in mind will notice
similarities between that film’s protagonist and Jake Hannaford though like F for Fake it treads a fine line between
pushing the envelope and wallowing in the master filmmaker’s own obsessions and
indulgences. While I myself am not
entirely convinced just yet editor Bob Murawski working from Welles’ notes and
previously edited footage has fashioned together the late director’s final
masterpiece, that they were able to edit this gargantuan personal project
together into something watchable and distributable to theaters is nothing
short of miraculous.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki