You take the good with the bad. Yes, Netflix may finance annual Adam Sandler comedies, one of which features the sight of David Spade physically beating Paula Patton while shouting about what a good guy he is, but at least they've done good for the world of art by using their seemingly endless oceans of money to complete Orson Welles final film The Other Side of the Wind. This project started filming in the early 1970's and after a six-year-long filming process began an extensive post-production session that Orson Welles didn't finish before his passing in October 1985. In the more than three decades since then, the footage for this film has been mired in endless legal controversy that prevented it from being finished up.
After all that hardship, here it is, in all its glory, The Other Side of the Wind and while the historical significance of this project is very much worth noting and applauding, the movie actually works superbly well as just a stand-alone piece of cinema, one that fits into the experimental style of filmmaking that Welles was enamored with in his final directorial efforts. The very loose premise that the movie is working with takes place in the early 1970's and concerns acclaimed fictional filmmaker Jake Hannaford (John Huston), an individual Welles apparently based on Ernest Hemingway but is clearly also a Welles pastiche in many respects. Hannaford is hosting a party at his house, one that is going to be heavily attended by the type of young filmmakers and film aficionados that were defining this era of cinema.
Both before and during this party, the movie cuts between the perspectives of various characters that include Hannaford's right-hand man Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), overly eager and equally oblivious Billy Boyle (Norman Foster) and recently fired makeup artist Zimmer (Cameron Mitchell, wow is it a delightful surprise to see him here). Like fellow mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, The Other Side of the Wind ensures that its premise populated almost entirely by insufferable people doesn't become a chore to endure by way of constantly hopping from one person to another, there's a whole mess of subplots to grapple with here and this method of non-stop hopping between perspectives is the only way we can follow all of them cohesively.
This unorthodox narrative approach is accompanied by a similarly out-of-the-box style of filming that has all of the action captured with a variety of cameras held by people ranging from interviewers to party guests and everyone in between. Shot decades before the invention of the cell phone, The Other Side of the Wind feels like a prophetic piece of work what with characters constantly referencing the omnipresence of cameras and recording devices that are always on and always capturing what's going on at the moment. The mere existence of these items ensures that it's more difficult than ever for these characters, particularly the mythic Jack Hannaford, aren't able to hide their true emotionally empty selves, no matter how hard they try.
Among its many themes, The Other Side of the Wind is, like La Dolce Vita, a depiction of how affluent people attempt to cover up their own internal woes through endless debauchery. Also like La Dolce Vita, The Other Side of the Wind is incredibly entertaining to watch, just the bold camerawork and editing alone that convey the tense mood of this party where everyone has a grudge with somebody had me totally engrossed. Ditto for the assortment of boldly defined characters who ensure that the individual members of this sprawling cast don't blend together. Brooks Otterlake, who alternates throughout the story between being either a loyal Smithers or a disillusioned Kif to his boss Hannaford, is a great example of the kind of richly defined people found throughout this tale.
Watching these well-realized people constantly hash out their own agendas and get more and more frazzled as the night wears on turns out to be a key part of why The Other Side of the Wind is such a riveting experience, one that's remarkably cohesive in how it's been put together considering the tumultuous production its been through. The footage here has been restored to a crisp quality that allows for the imagery intended to look like it's been caught on the fly to feel so vibrant and alive that one may feel like they've stumbled onto footage of an Hollywood party from the 1970's, though I suppose to the constant cutaways to the gorgeous looking film-within-a-film would disrupt that illusion.
That movie-within-a-movie, which is supposed to be the newest work from John Hannaford, in The Other Side of the Wind, with its minimal dialogue, rampant use of female nudity and symbolist imagery, is an eerily accurate imitation of the avant-garde cinema of the late 60's and early 70's (apparently, it's specifically supposed to be a pastiche on the works of Michaelangelo Antonioni). It's utterly fascinating to watch Welles, who started his days as a filmmaker in the 1940's, do his own take on what was considered the most cutting-edge filmmaking of the 1970's, especially since he uses it as a mechanism through which to convey the creative stagnation of Hannaford, who has no real idea of what anything in the film means and is making things up as he goes along. This artistic stagnation combined with the fact that his character is facing bankruptcy informs a sense of chilling melancholy woe among Hannaford and his group of closest allies that feels like the band on the Titanic playing one last song as the boat sinks. The end is near, there's nothing we can do to avert it, let's just throw a party and go on with our business. The party doesn't end well at all for the characters, but as the basis for The Other Side of the Wind, it does make for some excellent cinema.
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