2018-ish posthumous movie
Rating: 16/20
Plot: A director shows off his latest movie at his birthday party as he tries to get financing to finish it.
It's 2018, and I'm getting ready to write about a new Orson Welles movie that was released on Netflix. Let that sink in.
In this, Welles asks what all cinephiles have been thinking for years: "Is the camera merely a phallus?" His answer is probably that it isn't, the question more a non sequitur than anything that's actually worth probing. I didn't have a firm grasp on what Welles was trying to do here. Is it autobiographical, an honest look at a himself as an artist and a human being? Is it a parody, some curmudgeonly shade throwing at avant-garde film-making from the 60's and 70's? Is it experimental comedy, a comical nightmare, existential slapstick?
The documentary also released on Netflix helps out somewhat although thankfully allows a lot of the mystery to remain mysterious. But I'll write about that separately.
What is clear from a first watch of The Other Side of the Wind is that Welles still had a lot of juice left in his bulbous tank. This is freeform faux-documentary making, spliced and diced and glued together in a giant slop that might be frustrating to people looking for a narrative or even a character study but will be rewarding for those able to allow themselves to be absorbed into its rhythms. A choppy and fragmented mosaic, this just begs to be watched multiple times to see if there are pieces that are supposed to be connected. It leaves questions, ones that I'm sure Welles wouldn't even be able to answer. But even if you don't understand why there are little people or why the mannequins are being shot up (is that a spoiler?) or what it means when the lights go out, there's a jazzy buoyancy to this whole thing that keeps this thrilling even when it starts to feel a little redundant.
I'm not sure if Welles is using different cameras because he was forced to as he filmed this thing over several years or if it was all part of the plan, but it gave the birthday party scenes a unique look. The real visual splendor is in the film-within-the-film which was titled The Other Side of the Wind. I was blown away by some of the images in that, and that's not just because Oja Kodar was naked almost the entire time. Welles may have been poking fun at European filmmakers with the film-within-a-film, but he really showed off a great eye for pretentious and likely meaningless imagery.
The scene that really blew me--and apparently a lot of other people--completely away is a sex scene in the film-within-a-film. Rhythmic sounds of railroad tones, windshield wipers, chimes, passing cars, and jewelry blend with all these fantastic colors and lovely fake-movie rain to make you believe you're seeing things you're supposed to be hearing and hearing things you're supposed to be seeing. It's one of the most gorgeous things I've seen in a movie in a long, long time.
I could talk about the performances (John Huston is especially good, bringing this gravitas to a Hemingway-esque figure), but they don't matter as much as the editing. The documentary has Welles talking about divine accidents and how he wanted to approach this film as a director "fishing" for those accidents. I can't imagine what work went into this (I believe by Bogdanovich) to piece loads of footage into something semi-coherent, but this works. Huston gets progressively drunker, the friction between characters gets more frictiony, and the nightmare deepens as this birthday party continues. By the end, we wrap back around to meet the beginning again, a snake eating its own ass, and we're left to try to put all the pieces together.
This thing's got layers, man. It's a movie about making movies, of course, and that leads to enough meta shenanigans for most people. It's hard to not think it's at least partly autobiographical, but there's another layer where Welles knows that people know it's autobiographical and is likely playing around with people, messing with the mystique, goofing with the gossip. Whatever screenplay Welles stumbled into the production with was ever-evolving, shaped by changes in Welles' actual relationships during the period of time during which this was filmed. There are suggested betrayals, fractured mentorships, incomprehensible midgetry, unspoken jealousies, laughable pretenses, and derided romances. It morphs into a story about a director trying to finance his independent productions because Welles had trouble financing his productions and then had trouble financing this production which is likely what he knew would happen all the time.
This makes me want to revisit F for Fake. And that makes me want to start wearing a cape.
I was so pleased to see Angelo Rossitto. He has a little cowboy friend, too.
Anyway, I wasn't planning on writing very much. This is more for Josh so that he has a place to put his thoughts.
I'm going back through my notes, and I'm realizing that so many of them are just scratching the surface of what's going on in this movie. These notes are about the humor, the visuals, the editing...but I think the larger conversation should be about the purpose and the intention. Let me get the surface stuff out of the way and see if it reveals anything about the intention
ReplyDeleteThe humor: This movie definitely has a sense of humor. From the "all these stupid dummies" line Cameron Mitchell says to the camera man physically hanging off the back of a car. It's good to know Welles didn't take himself so seriously.
The visuals: There were so many shadows and objects which obstruct faces. The black and white - to - color, I think, was almost certainly on purpose. Regardless of what narrative or theme we were supposed to get out of Peter Bogdanovich's editing, we definitely were seeing exactly what Welles wanted us to see. That scene in the car was masterful.
I'm glad you mentioned John Huston's performance. He's got this god-like voice limbers around doling out lines with half-open eyes and tufted hair. He's just so damn cool
This movie is very anarchist -- very antiestablishment. Do you think that was something the audience was supposed to get out of it?
So, here's my speech on why I think it's a dream/nightmare. On the surface, things make no sense. Even the characters within the movie question their realities. But, things are given a purpose later on -- or simply ignored altogether. The film-within-a-film is almost like one of those reoccurring dreams we have...this dream theory was solidified for me at the end with the film reels were out of order. The German knew something was wrong, identified it, tried to articulate it, but went along with it. Of course, I'm probably reading too much into this, but how can you not? There's something big going on with this movie, why not attach meaning to it even it it's not the intended meaning? It's bye bye Ms. American Pie. The Jester is whomever you want it to be in the end no matter what the writer intended.
My favorite line from the movie:
"Sounds like shooting."
"I'm disappointed in ya. That's a lousy line o'dialogue."
Possible solution to the issue of not being able to connect the film-within-the-film to the rest of this: the director controlling and demanding that his performers are naked in a similar way to how Welles felt that his movies are controlled by outside forces and how the public/media wants him naked. Not naked naked though because few were probably interested in that.
ReplyDeleteI'm typing this on my phone, so it's going to be a mess. My daughter is also driving which is also distracting me.
Is it ok if I say that I like your Dream theory even though I don't agree with that reading at all? I think that's where I'm at with that one. It feels like I'm using the "purgatory" description for movies too often lately, but that's more how I see it. We can find common ground by calling it a "nightmarish purgatory" maybe.
You're probably right that the camera/color shifts were part of his plan all along. I don't know if there's anything there beyond the aesthetics. Although, maybe it does make it...dare I say it...dreamier. I'm sure somebody could sit down with a spreadsheet and keep track of the kinds of things said or done in black and white as opposed to color to see if there's anything there. Let's get Melissa on that for us.
Antiestablishment? I suppose. It's interesting that Dennis Hopper is in there because I think that's one of the new American voices he was probably poking fun at a little. That drug sequence in Easy Rider seems like the kind of thing that might have irritated Welles. He probably wanted to show that he could not only do that sort of new-fangled experimental thing, but he could do it even better.