The Other Side of the Wind

Movie
German title	The Other Side of the Wind
Original title	The Other Side of the Wind
Country of production	France , Iran , USA
original language	English
Publishing year	2018
length	122 minutes
Age rating	FSK 12
Rod
Director	Orson Welles
script	Orson Welles, ; Oja Kodar
production	Frank Marshall ; Filip Jan Rymsza
music	Michel Legrand
camera	Gary Graver
cut	Bob Murawski , ; Orson Welles
occupation
	John Huston : JJ Jake Hannaford; Robert Random : Oscar 'John' Dale; Oja Kodar : Red Indian; Peter Bogdanovich : Brooks Otterlake; Susan Strasberg : Juliet Rich; Lilli Palmer : Zarah Valeska; Norman Foster : Billy Boyle; Edmond O'Brien : Pat Mullins; Tonio Selwart : the baron; Mercedes McCambridge : Maggie Noonan; Paul Stewart : Matt Costello; Cameron Mitchell : Matt Zimmer; Gregory Sierra : Jack Simon; Dan Tobin : Dr. Bradley Pease Burroughs; Cathy Lucas : Mavis Henscher; Geoffrey Land : Max David, film producer; Joseph McBride : Pister, film critic; Pat McMahon : Fassbender, film journalist; Howard Grossman : Higgam, biographer; Angelo Rossitto : Short of stature; As well as herself in brief appearances: Stéphane Audran , Claude Chabrol , Curtis Harrington , Dennis Hopper , Henry Jaglom , George Jessel , Paul Mazursky

The Other Side of the Wind is an Orson Welles film that satirically portrays legendary director Jake Hannaford, played by John Huston . It was planned as the director's comeback . The film, although shot by Welles, but never completed due to his death in 1985, was completed by Netflix from 2017. In addition to Huston, several Hollywood greats worked with Susan Strasberg , Lilli Palmer , Dennis Hopper and Peter Bogdanovich . The film celebrated its world premiere on August 31, 2018 as part of the Venice Film Festival .

action

Looking back, the last day of the life of star director Jake Hannaford is portrayed, who died in a car accident the morning after his 70th birthday. There were then different opinions as to whether it was an accident or a suicide. Director Otterlake, who is a friend of Hannaford and who reports from an old man's perspective many years later, acts as the narrator.

Jake Hannaford, who had great success in Hollywood in the golden era, is planning a comeback shortly before his 70th birthday with his new project The Other Side of the Wind . He is making an avant-garde film that also adapts to the changed audience tastes of New Hollywood cinema with its garish staging and lavish sex scenes . However, filming stalled when the young lead actor John Dale stormed angrily off the set and never returned. Now the future of the film project is at risk. The studio boss Max David, a hoped-for financier, looks unimpressed at part of the scenes shot by Hannaford. There seems to be little narrative coherence, although the images are visually impressive and are based on European art cinema. Hannaford himself is not even present at the screening, only his old regular actor Billy Boyle, who, however, cannot give Max David a convincing impression of the work.

Meanwhile, numerous people are on their way to Hannaford's birthday party, which is hosted on a ranch in Arizona by the Austrian Hollywood actress Zarah Valeska. Hannaford himself drives a car with some curious film journalists and the young director Brooks Otterlake, an admirer and observer of Hannaford's films, who recently celebrated his big break with a hit film and is also attracting a lot of attention.

The celebration becomes full of annoyances and mishaps. Numerous film journalists and cineastes are invited to put annoying questions to Hannaford and wonder about the absence of John Dale. Most of the scenes from the film are presented to the guests, but the performance is interrupted several times by power outages. In one scene, it becomes clear in which situation Dale left the film set - in the middle of a sex scene in which Hannaford was desolate and shouted suggestive comments as directing instructions. The young filmmaker Jack Simon and later the critic Juliet Rich suggest that Hannaford - always portraying himself in public as a macho and womanizer - could have repressed homosexual feelings. Although he always slept with the wife or girlfriend of his male leading actors, he was actually more fascinated by them and only made the men in his films into stars. Hannaford discovered his newest leading actor, John Dale, when he apparently wanted to commit suicide by jumping into the Pacific Ocean. During the ceremony, Dale's former schoolteacher, Burroughs, appears and tells Hannaford that Dale staged the suicide attempt and deliberately wanted to attract the famous director's attention.

Hannaford gets drunk as the party turns into a final disaster. He tries to discuss the difficult situation in peace with his long-term confidante, but everywhere it is teeming with curious people with their cameras and recording devices. The first of his old buddies like the make-up artist Zimmer left him before the impending bankruptcy. Hannaford finally seeks Otterlake as his last hope, who recently won a $ 40 million film deal. Otterlake does not want to finance Hannaford's film with his own money, although he is reluctant to admit it. The two directors realize that they have apparently reached the end of their friendship.

Hannaford traditionally gives presents to his guests on his birthday: He bequeaths the Indian leading actress of the film the bones of an Indian killed by whites in the 19th century, which the other guests only apprehend with unease. He also shoots his rifle at the numerous ordered John Dale cardboard displays that have been piled up in the garden of the property. Eventually, as the power outage continues on the property, the remainder of the showing will take place in a nearby drive-in theater . It comes to a scandal when Juliette Riche again wants to ask Hannaford about his sexuality and the drunken director knocks her down. Hannaford then drives back to the property at dawn: in the sports car he actually wanted to give Dale as a present at the end of the shooting. Dale arrived at the ranch at dawn and Hannaford asks if he wanted to get into the sports car. Dale refuses, and the drunk Hannaford begins the drive that ends with his death.

Meanwhile, Hannaford's film ends in the drive-in theater, but only the leading actress pays attention to the final scene. At the end of the film you can hear Hannaford speaking: “Who knows? Maybe you can stare too hard at something, huh? Drain out the virtue, suck out the living juice. You shoot the great places and the pretty people, all those girls and boys - shoot 'em dead. "

production

History of origin

Orson Welles (right) directed the film but was unable to finish editing before his death

Directed by Orson Welles . The main character of Jake Hannaway or Hannaford is based on Ernest Hemingway. Welles came up with the idea for the plot after the writer's suicide in 1961. The film is also considered a semi-autobiographical project in which the director plays with a wide variety of staging forms. It is structured like a collage in the style of a mockumentary . Welles shot the satirical appraisal of Hollywood and the experimental cinema with both color and black-and-white images and used photographs in several formats. The shooting took place between 1970 and 1976. Production stopped between 1971 and 1973 due to financial difficulties that Welles' production company got into.

The film was never completed by Welles, however, because the director died in 1985 at the age of 70 after he is said to have cut around 40 to 50 minutes of the film. In addition to The Other Side of the Wind , his film Don Quixote is one of the great lost works in film history.

Film editing and film music

In March 2017, it was announced that Netflix had acquired the worldwide rights to The Other Side of the Wind in order to complete the previously unfinished film. At that time, the rolls of film had already been brought from the Paris warehouse to Los Angeles, where Frank Marshall and Orson Welles' close friend Peter Bogdanovich oversaw the editing. In total, there are said to have been over 1,000 film roles. Marshall and his team wanted to use Welles' personal notes to guide their work. Since no film music had ever been composed for the film in the past, Michel Legrand took over the composition. This is his last work before he died in January 2019. In February 2019, La-La Land Records released the soundtrack for the film, which includes a total of 16 pieces of music.

publication

In October 2017 it was announced that Netflix would also take over the distribution of the film itself. Netflix canceled the presentation of the Orson Welles film at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018 due to a dispute with the organizers. At the end of May 2018 it was announced that Netflix was planning a limited theatrical release, which may be reserved for US cinemas. The film premiered on August 31, 2018 as part of the Venice Film Festival . Shortly before that, Netflix released a first trailer. From the end of September 2018 it was shown at the New York Film Festival . On November 2, 2018, Netflix added the film to its program.

The documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead , also published on Netflix at the same time, deals extensively with the background story of The Other Side of the Wind and uses conversations and archive material to provide an informative reconstruction of the complicated production history, says Robin Mahler von Nau : is the perfect complement to the laid-looking movie. " They'll Love Me When I'm Dead was on 31 August 2018 in parallel with the premiere of the Other Side of the wind in Venice, Netflix the first time at the Telluride film festival presented .

reception

Reviews

So far, the film has received approval from 83 percent of all Rotten Tomatoes critics and achieved an average rating of 7.4 out of a possible 10 points.

Robert Abele of TheWrap calls The Other Side of the Wind a suicide note from a seedy giant, and the film is in line with Orson Welles' oeuvre when it examines the complexity of a man, but also the environment that made him.

The film critic Patrick Wellinski told Deutschlandfunk Kultur that The Other Side of the Wind was anything but easily accessible in its complex structure and identified Orson Welles as a blatant avand-garde. According to Wellinski, the film is overwhelming because it takes nothing into account, and so characters are not introduced, and like in a free jazz soundtrack, the plot jumps from one narrative level to the next: “This film comes to us from the afterlife and challenges us and our viewing habits are completely new. "

The online magazine OutNow explains that The Other Side of the Wind comes in the style of a mockumentary as a satirical drama: “It's filmed experimentally and many stylistic devices are used. There are also quick changes of scene and a huge number of cuts. It still seems lively at the beginning, but the hectic pace is exhausting in the long run. ”All the actors played confidently, and John Huston in particular fits like a fist, the review continues, and despite the storm of images, the dialogues have a high expressiveness which, however, is not always comprehensible.

Robin Mahler von Nau thinks that the film can definitely be viewed as a swipe at Hollywood , and this thesis is supported by the fact that several directors were involved. Unfortunately, the whole thing never really gets going because the style changes sketchily between art, youth film, comedy or thriller, says Mahler, but with continuous running time a curious visual experience unfolds and sums up: “ The Other Side of the Wind is a multifaceted document from a bygone era in the film industry . The ambitious work is cut hectically, narrated in fragments and thus puts the viewer to the test. Whether it is a satire on European art films or criticizes the zeitgeist of the time, everyone should decide for themselves. For cineastes, the ambiguous plot represents a fountain full of possibilities for interpretation. Those looking for light entertainment, on the other hand, will be deterred by the many cuts and the lack of characterization. "