Orson Welles’ final film, The Other Side of the Wind, was his last attempt to regain his place in Hollywood. Due to political and financial issues, this film was not completed until this year, nearly three decades after Welles’ death. It was released on Netflix on Nov. 2, and despite the film’s troubled past, it successfully places Welles back among Hollywood’s elite.
During the Golden Age of Hollywood — which lasted roughly from 1920 to the early 1960s — Welles was renowned in the industry, directing nearly 40 films in his lifetime. However, once Hollywood began to decline, Welles began to lose his influence as a filmmaker. He was never able to successfully return to the scene, and most of his projects, including The Other Side of the Wind, went unfinished.
The film itself is difficult to analyze from a modern sense of performances and screenplay as Welles’ intentions for the film lie in his critiques of the global film scene at the time. Welles focuses on his hatred of Hollywood and the arthouse style that had become popular in Europe. Welles found himself stuck between his inability to fund his movies in Hollywood and his desire to avoid conforming to this new style of cinema.
The film follows the character Jake Hannaford as he tries to fund his final movie. The film is styled as a documentary of the screening of Hannaford’s film. Welles balances the narrative between this fictional documentary and footage of his protagonist’s film, including several different styles that move freely between professional and amateur filmmaking.
Welles also masterfully spliced together each of the plot lines. Hannaford’s story is copied from Welles’ personal account of trying to fund his film. Welles finds a good balance of fiction and non-fiction.
Welles was outspoken about his hatred of the European arthouse style of the Italian greats such as Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, and this hatred is depicted in Hannaford’s film. Welles crafts Hannaford’s film in a style reminiscent of Antonioni’s 1966 film, “Blow Up” but in the most irreverent way possible. Welles removes all the art from the genre and replaces it with gratuitous nudity and violence.
Although the focus of the film is not on the performances, John Huston’s performance as the washed up Jack Hannaford perfectly fits into Welles’ Hollywood critique. Huston himself was a director in the Golden Age of Hollywood and is best known for writing and directing the 1941 film, “The Maltese Falcon.” Like Welles, Huston also had difficulty adapting to the changing Hollywood scene, so his performance is certainly believable.
Although “The Other Side of the Wind” is a critique of the Hollywood system, the film reminds audiences of Welles’ fantastic filmmaking ability. Fans of Welles will find this style much harsher than his previous work, but great nonetheless.
For the Love of Cinema 