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The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
A Singular Film From A Singular Man
What can be said about this film that says so much already?
Orson Welles lived a hectic life in which he captured the minds of Americans in many ways. His work in the theater--from his unhinged Voodoo Macbeth to his stark Native Son--was without parallel. His work on the radio established his Golden Voice as a story weaver that could fix the audience in a trance, whether that was in Dracula or in the ubiquitous War of the Worlds. Film was the one that got away--the medium that he spent his whole life trying to conquer, the dream he spent his whole life trying to chase down, though never quite doing so. Circumstances, bad breaks, and some amount of wrongly placed self-importance prevented Welles from climbing that mountain in his lifetime but this film, The Other Side of the Wind, puts much of that lifelong frustration on full display in a whirlwind study of film as a creative art form and one man's place in it.
Nothing is held back in this highly personal study of filmmaker Jake Hannaford as he hosts his 70th birthday party on the day before his death. To me at least, John Huston's Hannaford is clearly a Welles stand-in as a grizzled seen-it-all veteran trying to make a Hollywood comeback after years abroad (not so coincidentally exactly what Welles was trying to do at the time). The tip off to much of this is the slightly surreal horde of writers, cameramen and photographers that document every second of the party and nearly every scene, hounding Hannaford and all of his friends and enemies for an inside scoop or secret behind the man and the work that he does. I see this as a perfect analogue for the way that the media treated Welles in his lifetime (he was a household name and variously a media darling or pariah from the time he was 21 until his death at 70) and, in fact, after his death, with the plethora of film critics trying to look (perhaps too deep) behind the curtain of this own work.
This all being said, the star of the show here is the captivating way in which Welles chose to depict this story. Utilizing the writers, cameramen and photographers that pepper each scene to full effect, the film is presented almost as a found document pieced together from the real time "documentary film" that the viewer can see being shot. A dizzying amount of cuts are employed as the film segues from varying points of view in black and white (often very darkly rendered) as well as color. Each shot is constantly moving, zooming, panning, re-framing and refocusing (with a particular affinity for other camera lenses) in order to capture--in everything from wide shot to extreme closeup--real time events (such as the bus ride) and conversations that are occurring in different nooks and crannies at the party. These sequences are edited in such a way as to disorient, to be intentionally discontinuous (full of jump cuts) and to feel as if it were spontaneous, all of which it pulls of magnificently. (Indeed, the whole found document idea has only gained traction with the 40+ years that have passed since this film was shot).
As if all this weren't enough, there are many cases were multiple planes of action in wildly different locations are being intercut with one another and with scenes from Hannaford's film which is fittingly enough also entitled The Other Side of the Wind.
This film within a film is a marvel in itself. Wordless, it stars only Welles muse Oja Kodar as the unnamed Actress and Bob Random as the mysterious, enigmatic John Dale whose disappearance becomes the bane of Hannford's existence in the mother film. The film within the film wields a vivid near psychedelic color palette as it unfurls some images (like its mother film quickly and discontinuously cut while imbued with a dynamic sense of movement and composition) that are supposed to be plainly shocking to the audience, taxi cab scene in particular. It is important that the audience gets from this film within a film what they are supposed to get out of it. Its plentiful (though tasteful) nudity and strong, brazen sexuality are supposed to be a satire on what the "New Hollywood" favored depicting at the time (doubtlessly to some degree influenced by what Welles might have been shocked to see upon his own return). It is supposed to be self indulgent, empty headed and as a result somewhat funny but besides being all of those things it is entrancing to watch.
The ending at the drive-in is another high point. As Hannaford rolls away (to his demise), the central mystery surrounding Random's Dale having been put to bed, audio of Hannaford--in one of the many tapes that his friend Brooks Otterlake (played by a suitably snarky Peter Bogdanovich) recorded so that Jake would not have to answer any more questions about his life--explaining the temporality of images ("you shoot it and it disappears") as the camera pulls back from the fading screen to reveal an empty lot and the desert beyond it. It's sad but it is the most lyrical part of the film, perfectly encapsulating the aloneness that Hannaford feels (all of his friends are either quitting or are just pretending) which had to be something close to what Welles felt at some point in his life. This ending says to me that for independent filmmakers like Welles and Hannaford, the long hard road to creative fruition is a lonely one, trod only by the truly hungry like themselves.
Huston, Bogdanovich, Kodar, and a cast not so conspicuously chocked full of actors who have doubled as filmmakers at some point (Chabrol, Hopper, Mazursky, and longtime Welles associate Norman Foster to name a few) all integrate themselves swimmingly into the gurgling sea of what is truly a filmmakers film if there ever has been one.
There are no films quite like this one. This is an achievement, a signpost and a work of great genius and I thank Netflix (and many of Welles' original collaborators) for honoring his vision and seeing that this film be finished and released. Indeed, the only thing missing from this film is Welles himself. A++
Salvatore Giuliano (1962)
A Unique Motion Picture Experience
This film is not without its flaws. The middle is quite slow, linearity is minimal and some sequences are hard to follow. However, the ultimate courtroom sequence with Gaspare Pisciotta arguing his innocence packs quite a punch and gives this film's ending some substance that the middle fairly lacked. This saves a film that, in the end, blends multiple styles quite well and stands as an achievement in Italian Cinema that has few parallels in America. Use of the crash zoom and documentary style camera-work adds to the effect that Rosi was trying to create of melding fact with fiction in a unique way which is only heightened by the absence of the title outlaw in all but words and a corpse in the films opening minutes. Salvatore Giuliano is not for all viewers, but it clearly has many merits that its contemporaries lack.