THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (2018 / 1970 - '75)

In a story he tells on himself, Peter Bogdanovich recalls going with Orson Welles to see his adaptation of Franz Kafka’s THE TRIAL/’62, a film Bogdanovich had never warmed up to, only to be taken aback hearing Welles roar with laughter at its tragic absurdity. And so it goes again with Bogdanovich, who took key position in finishing this long aborning late Welles opus, wrapping ‘post’ five decades after filming to a duly respectful critical reception and shocking near indifference away from the film fest circuit. Talked up as Orson’s final testament, his ultimate word on sex, death & betrayal (in ascending order of importance), like that screening of THE TRIAL, they’ve all missed the point. WIND turns out to be a fun, even jolly, film about sex, death & betrayal, like a Hollywood RULES OF THE GAME, a country party, here with an unfinished art film as the entertainment (plus hope of gaining buzz & finishing money). A game that goes on till someone dies. Not without a melancholy edge, not without accounts settled, but also not without zest. Fortunately, if Bogdanovich & crew can’t see what they’ve wrought, they’ve gotten close enough to let us see it. The crazy film is tremendous stuff, charting the last day of Welles alter ego John Huston, a fading Falstaff figure, against Peter Bogdanovich’s fast-rising young Prince Hal of a director. The party-goers a riotous gang, shot & zap edited from many angles (easy to follow, BTW), with a mock-Antonioni 35mm pastiche (Antonioni a particular bête noire of Welles), as the film-within-the-film he needs to wrap up. Welles being Welles, even as he sends up art film æsthetics, he can’t help startling us; including a remarkable ‘bi-rigged’ sex sequence unlike anything he ever tried. (Not revolutionary like his CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT battle, but pretty amazing in its own way.) The screening of this rough-edit constantly interrupted, like a meal in a Buñuel film. But not to worry since loyal aide de camp Norman Foster, stealing the film in the Sancho Panza spot Welles often returned to (Everett Sloan in CITIZEN KANE; Joseph Calleia in TOUCH OF EVIL; Akim Tamiroff in the aborted DON QUIXOTE; inverted as Iago in OTHELLO) is always able to pick up the pieces. How did all the publicity hacks miss conveying what fun the film is? Maybe they needed to hear Welles in the background, roaring at the way life’s tragedies play for laughs, even the melancholy parts.

DOUBLE-BILL: Best bet, first watch the ‘Making Of’ documentary, THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD/’18. It gives away little of the plot and will make you gasp at the audacity of how Welles (and latter-day hands) put it all together.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Just as Antonioni cast ill-fated Mark Frechette in ZABRISKIE POINT/’70 for that androgynous Jim Morrison/THE DOORS vibe, so Welles cast less unfortunate/slightly more talented Robert Random. It’s all in the cheek bones, baby.