The Other Side Of The Wind
Apr. 6th, 2022 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThe Other Side of The Wind was Orson Welles' last major film. He shot it in 1974 and was still working on it when he died.
The central character, the ageing film director, Jake Hannaford, is an epitome of all those manly, hard-drinking, copiously fornicating, fist-fighting American artists of whom the most iconic is Ernest Hemingway. Welles wasn't one of those guys- so this isn't him doing a Fellini- though he knocked around with some of them and could hold his own with them when needed.
He loved them, he hated them- and in this portrait of one of them he gets to talk about America, about American artists, about American manhood, American misogyny and the genocide of the original Americans...
Also about Hollywood...
About celebrity culture...
About the divine feminine and the hieros gamos...
About Shakespeare.
Hannaford and his entourage are caught up in a world of pretension, one-up-manship and constant noise. They are observed inscrutably by the unnamed woman who stars in his film- and whom he and the members of his entourage disregard, perve over and dismissively address as Pocahontas- thereby conflating two groups that America and the American dream-factory has persistently done down.
The woman, played by Welles' lover and co-screenwriter, Oja Kodar, never says a word. Neither does the male star of Hannaford's movie- an androgynous, sexually-ambiguous Jim Morrison lookalike with whom Hannaford is obsessed- and whose rebellion in response to Hannaford's goading has wrecked the project. In the movie within a movie he and the woman flirt and play chase- and the consummation of their mating ritual- though devoutly to be wished- is constantly thwarted.
The two of them- the woman and the womanish man- are everything Hannaford has avoided dealing with in his life and art, but is now belatedly but clumsily acknowledging. They are archetypes in a world of accidents. Hannaford himself is an accident- and just about to happen.
Hannaford has arranged for the party at which he is showing his film to be recorded in all its aspects by multiple cameras. He wants the whole truth to be shown- whatever that means- as if he knows this is positively his last appearance on any stage. Like Kane, like Arkadin, he is a great man whose legend is coming apart- and whose departure from the scene is overdue. The launch party is also his wake.
We are told the movie we are seeing has been compiled from the footage shot by those many and various cameras. it's in 16mm and 35mm, in black and white and colour- and Welles cuts it frenetically, snap, snap, snap, never holding any shot being for more than a few seconds. This was experimental in the 70s and still looks experimental today.
John Huston- with sometimes puckish, sometimes roaring Irish charm- plays Hannaford, Peter Bogdanovitch, smooth and witty- a complete bitch- plays Brooksy, his disciple, sounding board and surrogate son. Otherwise the cast is full of familiar and half-familiar faces- a number of them- like Huston and Bogdanovitch- film directors doing a fellow pro a favour: Norman Foster plays a former child star with overtones of Mickey Rooney, Dennis Hopper is to be glimpsed occasionally with a camera glued to his face, Claude Chabrol, of all people, pops up once or twice to ask questions.
For 40 years or thereabout, The Other Side of the Wind, was a lost film. But unlike other projects that Welles abandoned or hadn't the money to complete or had chopped to buggery by unsympathetic producers it was always recoverable. The celluloid was in the can, the work of editing was part way done, Welles had left clear assembly instructions assembly instructions; there wasn't any music, but Welles collaborator Michel Legrand was on hand to supply the kind of music Welles had said he wanted. Various complications, involving money and ego, stymied progress, but in the end Netflix stepped in to get the work done. The completed film came out in 2018. Peter Bogdanovitch- in at the beginning- was also there to help ease it into the world.
Was it worth the wait?
Yes. Absolutely!
The central character, the ageing film director, Jake Hannaford, is an epitome of all those manly, hard-drinking, copiously fornicating, fist-fighting American artists of whom the most iconic is Ernest Hemingway. Welles wasn't one of those guys- so this isn't him doing a Fellini- though he knocked around with some of them and could hold his own with them when needed.
He loved them, he hated them- and in this portrait of one of them he gets to talk about America, about American artists, about American manhood, American misogyny and the genocide of the original Americans...
Also about Hollywood...
About celebrity culture...
About the divine feminine and the hieros gamos...
About Shakespeare.
Hannaford and his entourage are caught up in a world of pretension, one-up-manship and constant noise. They are observed inscrutably by the unnamed woman who stars in his film- and whom he and the members of his entourage disregard, perve over and dismissively address as Pocahontas- thereby conflating two groups that America and the American dream-factory has persistently done down.
The woman, played by Welles' lover and co-screenwriter, Oja Kodar, never says a word. Neither does the male star of Hannaford's movie- an androgynous, sexually-ambiguous Jim Morrison lookalike with whom Hannaford is obsessed- and whose rebellion in response to Hannaford's goading has wrecked the project. In the movie within a movie he and the woman flirt and play chase- and the consummation of their mating ritual- though devoutly to be wished- is constantly thwarted.
The two of them- the woman and the womanish man- are everything Hannaford has avoided dealing with in his life and art, but is now belatedly but clumsily acknowledging. They are archetypes in a world of accidents. Hannaford himself is an accident- and just about to happen.
Hannaford has arranged for the party at which he is showing his film to be recorded in all its aspects by multiple cameras. He wants the whole truth to be shown- whatever that means- as if he knows this is positively his last appearance on any stage. Like Kane, like Arkadin, he is a great man whose legend is coming apart- and whose departure from the scene is overdue. The launch party is also his wake.
We are told the movie we are seeing has been compiled from the footage shot by those many and various cameras. it's in 16mm and 35mm, in black and white and colour- and Welles cuts it frenetically, snap, snap, snap, never holding any shot being for more than a few seconds. This was experimental in the 70s and still looks experimental today.
John Huston- with sometimes puckish, sometimes roaring Irish charm- plays Hannaford, Peter Bogdanovitch, smooth and witty- a complete bitch- plays Brooksy, his disciple, sounding board and surrogate son. Otherwise the cast is full of familiar and half-familiar faces- a number of them- like Huston and Bogdanovitch- film directors doing a fellow pro a favour: Norman Foster plays a former child star with overtones of Mickey Rooney, Dennis Hopper is to be glimpsed occasionally with a camera glued to his face, Claude Chabrol, of all people, pops up once or twice to ask questions.
For 40 years or thereabout, The Other Side of the Wind, was a lost film. But unlike other projects that Welles abandoned or hadn't the money to complete or had chopped to buggery by unsympathetic producers it was always recoverable. The celluloid was in the can, the work of editing was part way done, Welles had left clear assembly instructions assembly instructions; there wasn't any music, but Welles collaborator Michel Legrand was on hand to supply the kind of music Welles had said he wanted. Various complications, involving money and ego, stymied progress, but in the end Netflix stepped in to get the work done. The completed film came out in 2018. Peter Bogdanovitch- in at the beginning- was also there to help ease it into the world.
Was it worth the wait?
Yes. Absolutely!
