Reactions to 'The Other Side of the Wind'

[Terry]

I didn't think the 100% on Rotten Tomatoes would last; we have our first Rotten review, courtesy of Baradwaj Rangan, of Film Companion Reviews, who opines:

"I should have waited to watch it on Netflix, without the surrounding festival hype. No film can live up to that kind of backstory – certainly not this wildly experimental mix of meta joke and exhausting mess.

It probably helps if you’ve read This is Orson Welles... the pages about The Other Side of the Wind are far more interesting than anything in this movie."

[RayKelly]

I didn't think the 100% on Rotten Tomatoes would last; we have our first Rotten review, courtesy of Baradwaj Rangan, of Film Companion Reviews

The conclusion, IMHO, shows Rangan just didn't get it:
Is Welles like Kazan, a clueless older-era director who is, in the distributor’s words, “trying to get with it?” Or is he in on the joke, making his own movie even while commenting on New Hollywood? That we’ll never know may be Welles’s ultimate Rosebud.

[RayKelly]

In his Telluride wrap for The Hollywood Reporter, Todd McCarthy discussed audience reaction to The Other SIde of the Wind:

For the most true-believing monks of cinema, however, nothing could compare to the prospect of finally seeing Orson Welles’ 48-years-in-the-making The Other Side of the Wind. The world premiere, held at the 650-seat makeshift Palm cinema, was watched with rapt attention, and vigorous applause ensued at the end.

The reaction, as well as it could be gleaned from a random sampling of viewers of different ages and degrees of devotion, was one of general admiration and/or enthusiasm, of being impressed that an actual real movie was forged out of the assorted scraps of material left behind after Welles’ death 33 years ago.

To be sure, there was dissent, with some finding it somewhat boring, and the film encountered some complaints about the alleged male-gaze presentation of Welles’ then-companion (and co-screenwriter) Oja Kodar walking around starkers through much of her appearance — even though the film-within-the-film in which this appears is clearly meant to be a satire on Antonioni-like movies in which women walk around aimlessly for minutes on end.

But among serious cinephiles, the film looks to have been accepted as a legitimate representation of Welles’ intentions, and three people close to the restoration process — producer Frank Marshall, who worked on the pic during its shooting; Peter Bogdanovich, a Welles confidant who co-stars in it; and scholar Joseph McBride, who also plays a role — seemed to be breathing a great sigh of pleasure and relief over the weekend.

Shown in separate programs were two highly useful documentaries about the Welles film’s history and restoration, Morgan Neville’s They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and Ryan Suffern’s 39-minute A Final Cut for Orson.

McCarthy's fine piece can be read in its entirety at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a-solid-telluride-but-alfonso-cuarons-roma-rose-rest-1139361

[RayKelly]

David Bordwell weighs in at http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2018/09/04/venice-2018-welles-and-the-other-side-of-the-wind/. He was not impressed.

"I confess being disappointed by the film. I’m not ready to call it The Other Side of the Windbag, but I’m not sure it escapes the on-the-nose quality we often find in the climactic-gathering format. Here people must get both nasty and horribly transparent about baring their feelings. Moreover, the film-within-the-film, shot in glowing color and abstract cityscapes, is supposed to be a parody of Antonioni (Zabriskie Point in particular), but (a) most of it is more like a slick-magazine version of a trance film from the 40s like Meshes of the Afternoon; and (b) it’s inconceivable that even in the Love Era Hannaford’s project could receive commercial funding or release. It seems to me a bad idea of what a bad movie looks like. Still, I’m trying to keep an open mind. Watching it more analytically and reading what critics write about it may open it up for me in ways I can’t now predict. For the moment, it’s satisfying enough to thank Netflix for enabling us to see in however hypothetical a form, what forty years’ fuss has been about."

[jbrooks]

I think the whole Bordwell piece is worth reading. But he seems wildly off the mark is his criticism of the film-within-a-film. He attacks the fictional movie because "it’s inconceivable that even in the Love Era Hannaford’s project could receive commercial funding or release." But isn't that almost exactly Welles' point? Hannaford has no idea how to make a modern (c. 1969) film, and his attempt to do so is a mess that even the studio head can't understand. Bordwell's criticism seems akin to attacking "The Producers" because "Springtime for Hitler" would never make it on Broadway.

[RayKelly]

But isn't that almost exactly Welles' point? Hannaford has no idea how to make a modern (c. 1969) film, and his attempt to do so is a mess that even the studio head can't understand. Bordwell's criticism seems akin to attacking "The Producers" because "Springtime for Hitler" would never make it on Broadway.

I love your analogy.

[Roger Ryan]

I mentioned on the Criterion forum that I thought Bordwell's overall analysis was a good one, but wondered if his habit of counting the number of shots during a first viewing could have impinged on his enjoyment. I was told he approaches all films this way. Fair enough, but the number of individual shots in Wind must go far beyond any other film with this kind of dramatic/thematic heft - usually, this kind of fast cutting is reserved for action-oriented films. Also, as someone who finds Zabriskie Point less interesting than the "film-within-the-film" in Wind, I wouldn't say it's completely illogical for Hannaford's film to receive some kind of funding/release!

[Wellesnet]

TV Overmind:
https://www.tvovermind.com/movies/how-h ... kers-death

Word on the new film is rather mixed, to say the least. While many are ecstatic to finally see the film (in any form), others are less enthused. Some have lambasted it as nothing more than a rough-cut of a still-incomplete film.

[Roger Ryan]

...It was hardly Welles’ most creatively ambitious nor most narratively complex project ever...

I'd say Wind could very well be his most "creatively ambitious" project, at least from the technical angle of mixing film stock and multiple viewpoints while inter-cutting long stretches of a Zabriskie Point parody. This ambitiousness is the main reason the idea of of a successful completion was uncertain and why some feel the end result is so exhausting.

[Wellesnet]

Joseph McBride: ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ exceeds even my high expectations
http://www.wellesnet.com/joseph-mcbride ... d-exceeds/

My reaction at the end of the Telluride screening of Orson Welles's The Other Side of the Wind was not melancholy like those I understand and appreciate of Peter Bogandovich and Frank Marshall, my dedicated fellow members of VISTOW (Volunteers in Service to Orson Welles), but a feeling of tremendous achievement by Welles and all concerned in getting the film out and finally showing it to an audience.

Financial Times on
The Other Side of the Wind — a cinematic curiosity:

Slipping in and out of handheld black-and-white docu-style footage, and with many loosely woven meta elements, its mixed-media style at times looks bracingly contemporary, at others like a postcard from a bygone age. Some of us probably enjoyed the film-within-the-film element — a dreamy and very 1970s affair starring a pretty Native American woman with an apparent aversion to wearing clothes and an even prettier young dude with Marc Bolan curls — far more than we were supposed to. Allegedly an Antonioni pastiche (overtones of Zabriskie Point), it looked very much like Welles saying to the Young Turks of New Hollywood: see, I can make that kind of stuff if I choose to — akin to Led Zeppelin recording a punk song.

It may not count among Welles’s best work — if you regard it as his work at all — but the editors deserve kudos for having assembled something mostly coherent from the 100 hours they were faced with.

[leamanc]

McBride says Bogdanovich and Marshall feel melancholy now that it’s done and some have seen it. Are these reactions available to read or watch anywhere? I’m curious as to specifically why they feel that way.

[NoFake]

McBride says Bogdanovich and Marshall feel melancholy now that it’s done and some have seen it. Are these reactions available to read or watch anywhere? I’m curious as to specifically why they feel that way.

I hope someone can refresh my memory on this (Googling, alas, revealed nothing useful) but as I recall, Bogdanovich once told of a time when Welles was at his house and quietly absented himself from the conversation -- and, as it turned out, the room. Going on a search, Bogdanovich found him, of all places, in front of a TV set watching AMBERSONS, which either was being broadcast or was on a video Peter had (I read this 30 years ago, so my memory's fuzzy). Seeing that Welles was in tears, Bogdanovich tried to be unobtrusive, but Welles spotted him. Realizing that he had to say something, Peter decided to comment sympathetically on the pain that the ill-fated film had caused his friend, saying that he understood his tears of frustration and anger. Welles quickly corrected him. "It's not that. It's that . . . it's OVER." I think Bogdanovich and Marshall may have been experiencing something similar: a "melancholy" feeling that Welles is not here to see it, to revel in the plaudits TOSOTW received, and to receive, personally rather than posthumously (hoping you're up there, Orson, looking down), the long-denied appreciation for a film that was so close to his heart.

[leamanc]

I think Bogdanovich and Marshall may have been experiencing something similar: a "melancholy" feeling that Welles is not here to see it, to revel in the plaudits TOSOTW received, and to receive, personally rather than posthumously (hoping you're up there, Orson, looking down), the long-denied appreciation for a film that was so close to his heart.

I’m guessing their melancholy has something to do with Orson not being here to see it. But then I wonder if the anticipation of Orson’s last film was better than actually seeing the finished product. McBride’s article sort of hints that it’s the latter.

Side note:

The way I remember the Ambersons story (and I’m going from memory here also and could be wrong) is that Orson, Oja, and Peter were hanging out one night and the movie came on the TV. Orson refused to watch it, so the other two did. They looked up later to see Orson in the doorway watching anyway, in tears. Peter asked him about it later, and then the story is much the same as what you said.

[NoFake]

leamanc wrote:

Side note:

The way I remember the Ambersons story (and I’m going from memory here also and could be wrong) is that Orson, Oja, and Peter were hanging out one night and the movie came on the TV. Orson refused to watch it, so the other two did. They looked up later to see Orson in the doorway watching anyway, in tears. Peter asked him about it later, and then the story is much the same as what you said.

Absolutely; that could well be. But as you note, the, let's say, final scene - in effect, the key element -- "is much the same".

[RayKelly]

McBride says Bogdanovich and Marshall feel melancholy now that it’s done and some have seen it. Are these reactions available to read or watch anywhere? I’m curious as to specifically why they feel that way.

From the Wellesnet report on the Telluride premiere:

Bogdanovich, who has striven to see the film finished since Welles' death in 1985, wistfully said of the completed movie, "It's so sad. It's the end of everything."

When Marshall was asked by film critic Leonard Maltin how he felt now that the film has had its
premiere, he almost broke down as he spoke, according to an onlooker.

“Emotional. It’s been a long project," Marshall said. "I’m thrilled. I started my career with Peter. Here we are today — we’re finished. It’s kind of a cathartic moment. But it’s been a hell of a ride.”