Reactions to 'The Other Side of the Wind'

[RayKelly]

Terrific job, Ray. I like your phrase "A brutal smackdown of both machismo and New Hollywood". An apt description of the two factions at Jake's party. Great work by the others too. I especially like Massimiliano's contribution. That film-within-the-film synopsis sounds mightily interesting per his description of it.

Thanks! Next up is Italian critic Alessandro Aniballi, who probes the theme of death present in "The Other Side of the Wind."
https://www.wellesnet.com/cabiria-other-side-wind-part-5/

[JMcBride]

Thanks much for posting all these intriguing articles
on OTHER WIND in English translation, Ray.

[Wellesnet]

Thanks much for posting all these intriguing articles
on OTHER WIND in English translation, Ray.

Thanks Joe.

We are thrilled to offer an English translation of "God's Magic Eye," a critical look at The Other Side of the Wind by Marco Vanelli, the editor-in-chief of the Italian film magazine Cabiria:

https://www.wellesnet.com/cabiria-other-side-wind-part-6/

[RayKelly]

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND will be shown Wednesday, Dec. 11, at Filmoteca de Catalunya.
The Barcelona film library's director, noted Orson Welles scholar Esteve Riambau, will provide an introduction.
Pretty sure this is the FIRST big screen showing of the movie in Spain.
https://www.wellesnet.com/other-wind-filmoteca-catalunya/

[RayKelly]

Film scholar Massimiliano Studer published a paper in Italy today examining how the creation of the Motion Picture Association of America changed the climate in Hollywood and led Orson Welles to explore sexuality more explicitly with THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.
https://www.wellesnet.com/orson-welles-paper-sex-nudity/

[RayKelly]

BEST OF THE DECADE: "The Other Side of the Wind" found itself on dozens of Best of the Year lists following its 2018 release. A year later, Orson Welles' film has been hailed by several critics as among the Best Films of the 2010s.
https://www.wellesnet.com/other-wind-best-decade/

[RayKelly]

Vulture has ranked the 300-plus Netflix movies
https://www.vulture.com/article/best-netflix-original-movies.html?utm_medium=s1&utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=vulture

1. The Other Side of the Wind
It’s a new movie from Orson Welles. Like, an entire feature-length movie. Directed by Orson Welles. And it’s new. Is this real life? At any rate, maybe this will be the thing to at long last banish his reputation as the boy genius who never re-attained his early success, a patent falsehood to anyone who’s seen his later work. There’s so much unchecked genius overflowing from Welles’ unfinished (until now!) swan song that it borders on arrogance, as an unimpeachable master chases his every artistic whim, no matter how far-out. He invests a whole lot of himself in Jake Hannaford, the freewheeling auteur portrayed by John Huston in a dual celebration and mockery of the so-called New Hollywood that put Welles’ contemporaries out to pasture. Hannaford spends his final day on Earth coasting through a fog of booze, lust, and other assorted off-the-wall excesses suffused with the hedonism and underlying sadness of the ‘70s. It’s a historical artifact with a restless avant-garde streak permanently placing it in the present.

[RayKelly]

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND is included on Vanity Fair's recent 5 worthy hidden Netflix gems.

"Strange that arrival of a storied, unfinished masterpiece by the notoriously talented Orson Welles — a director whose unmade films are just as legendary as the ones he did make — should feel like it came and went with barely any notice, except among critics and hardcore cinephiles..."

"... It stars Hollywood maverick John Huston as, well, a Hollywood maverick — but one at the tail end of his career, at the tail end of his life, actually, when his reputation is flailing. His chief apprentice (played by Peter Bogdanovich) is shooting past him in success and importance; his final film project is an embattled mess. That’s not the accidental irony of history you’re sensing, by the way: the Welles of the ‘70s was very much a filmmaker in exile from Hollywood. And every gleeful turn here—from the gaudy, riotous movie-within-a-movie (a wink at the work of Michelango Antonioni) to the a not-remotely-subtle forays into the daddy issues of it all—doubles as a send-up of Hollywood at large and as playful self-excoriation. No one knew how to lay it on thick quite as handily, or daringly, as Welles. This movie is yet more proof."

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/netflix-original-movies-best

[Le Chiffre]

"Strange that arrival of a storied, unfinished masterpiece by the notoriously talented Orson Welles — a director whose unmade films are just as legendary as the ones he did make — should feel like it came and went with barely any notice, except among critics and hardcore cinephiles..."

Netflix didn't do a very good job of promoting the film, which suggests that, after all the money they heroically put into completing it, the final product may have left them cold. The Netflix debut of Wind was supposed to open up a whole new audience for Welles's work. Sadly, that doesn't appear to have happened. One Spanish language review of the film I read not long ago liked the film, but thought its chief sin was an overdose of subtext. One couldn't expect Netflix's normal audience to be into analyzing that sort of thing. Most of them probably don't have a clue who Antonioni was, and couldn't care less.

Still, it's good to see Wind is appreciated by some influential people out there, and hopefully that will continue to grow. But the film's subtext may have to be debated for years. It may never be unraveled fully. Maybe it can't or shouldn't be.

[atcolomb]

I hope it will be released on disc so folks with no Netflix can have their own copy or check it out at their local library.

[tonyw]

Le Chiffre, Just like the "Rosebud" enigma of KANE, an open ending, the last (completed by others) Welles film complementing the first?

[Le Chiffre]

I don't think Welles wanted Wind to be his last film, but yes, Wind and Kane undoubtedly complement each other in several ways. One that comes to mind immediately is the fact that, like Citizen Kane's 'Projection Room' scene, The Other Side of the Wind features a film-within-the-film. Kane presented a newsreel short giving an objective overview of the life and career of the film's main protagonist. Wind on the other hand, gives us a look at the protagonist's shaky mental state through his latest unfinished film. Both films-within-the-film give us a sense of the character's God-like pretensions. Interesting also that both films are unfinished.

Wind and Kane are also both original creations by Welles, and among the only times he was willing to share screenwriting credit with someone else.

To me, Wind seems a bit like Ambersons too, in the sense that the main character is an aristocratic personality who falls on hard times and winds up on the verge of bankruptcy. Both films also feature a Greek chorus that comments on the main character, but eventually loses interest in him as he becomes more and more irrelevant due to changing times.

[JMcBride]

Of course, OTHER WIND is not Welles's last film, despite the hype. He released
FILMING OTHELLO theatrically and on TV after shooting wrapped on OTHER WIND.
Welles kept filming constantly in the remaining years of his life (1976-85) after the OTHER
WIND shooting. FILMING "THE TRIAL" is available on YouTube, though German TV turned
it down (because it's handheld!), and THE ORSON WELLES SHOW is on YouTube, etc. I'd say
his last film is ORSON WELLES' MAGIC SHOW, which was in progress when he died. The
night of his death he was writing directions for it and his one-man JULIUS CAESAR,
which he was going to start shooting that morning at UCLA. Enough exists of MAGIC SHOW,
which is episodic anyway, that it should be released by the Munich Film Museum on homevideo,
along with the other fragments, such as its satisfying half-hour assembly of THE DREAMERS,
for which (according to Gary Graver), Welles took care to shoot an ending in case
he didn't survive to complete the film.

[Le Chiffre]

Munich has done some real nice work with the unfinished films, but they've been pretty quiet since the centennial. I'd like to see their MERCHANT OF VENICE reconstruction sometime as well.

[Wellesnet]

Slipping under the radar last summer was the publication of the first book to critique the completed release of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind. A look at Michael Yates‘ Shoot ‘Em Dead: Orson Welles & The Other Side of the Wind at https://www.wellesnet.com/shoot-em-dead-book/
Sample from the introduction:

“Overwhelmingly ambitious despite its modest scope, the film is an alchemy of caustic drama, mockumentary, autoanalysis, and critique of the film medium. It is also hypnotically entertaining. Its story and structure are symbiotic; it is what it’s about – a meditation on death whose breathless style keeps (what Welles called) ‘the illusion of life’ from fading.”