John Huston

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND: Welles’ brilliance from beyond the grave

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John Huston in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed and released thirty years after Welles’ death, centers on the fictional cinema auteur Jake Hannaford (John Huston).  Not unlike Welles himself, Hannaford is widely recognized as brilliant and self-indulgent, as both a genius and impossible to work with, having a lifetime of relationship carnage strewn behind him.  For the zillionth time, Hannaford is broke and needs to find money to finish his latest movie.  He holds a screening party in hopes of snaring financial support from his now more successful protégé Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich).

The backdrop is the sort of 1970s Hollywood hedonism where the party includes naked models, midgets (“The midgets broke into the wine cellar and got their tiny hands on the fireworks”) and female manikins for target practice. And, oh, they invited the mid-70s version of Dennis Hopper.

Peter Bogdanovich and John Huston in Orson Wells’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Hannaford is surrounded by his own posse of collaborators and hangers-on, and a cynical bunch they are.  That rampant and matter-of-fact cynicism is very witty, and things are funniest when things go badly – the money pitch is prematurely exposed and the screening of an art film has to be re-located to a drive-in!

John Huston’s performance is wonderful, especially when Hannaford is not suffering fools gladly.  Hannaford’s team of scoundrels is played by Mercedes McCambridge, Tonio Selwirt as the Baron, Gregory Sierra, Paul Stewart and Edmond O’Brien, with Lili Palmer as an ex and Susan Strasberg as a provocateur of the press.  In fact, virtually every actor delivers an excellent performance, except for Cameron Mitchell with his odd, apparently Southern, accent.

I was surprised by brilliance of Norman Foster’s performance as Hannaford’s gofer Billy, loyal, weary and crapped-upon; Foster is known for 57 screen credits as a director, but he also acted, supporting Walter Huston in one of the first talkies in 1929.

Norman Foster in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

And then there’s the surreal film-within-the-film – the unfinished Hannaford movie that is being screened at the party.  The star of that film is Welles’ real-life girlfriend, the Croatian actress Oja Kodar, who co-wrote The Other Side of the Wind.  Kodar’s character strides around empty vistas naked and dominates the pretty boy leading man (Robert Random).  This film is pure eye candy, with the most vivid colors and the most dramatic camera angles.  Kodar’s almost silent performance is exceptional – she has the gaze of a predator, always direct and in command. She looks great naked, and her sex scene in a moving car is exceptionally erotic.

Some critical comment suggests that the film-within-the-film is Welles’ satire on European art films. But, to my eyes, it’s consistent with a good art film of the 1970s, too.  Either way, you can’t stop watching it.

Oja Kodar in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

The Other Side of the Wind has been famous for decades as a Lost Film (and now as a recovered film).  But it’s best viewed without that baggage – by just absorbing what’s up on the screen.

Not everyone will like The Other Side of the Wind, especially those who like their movies to be linear.   Is The Other Side of the Wind a mess, as some have described it?   I don’t think so because the party scenes are SUPPOSED to be frenetic – Welles dips deeply into chaos and ambivalence and obscurity with intentionality.

The Other Side of the Wind is Welles’ unsparing glimpse into his own personality – a personality that self-sabotages his art and cruelly mistreats those closest and most necessary to him.  The question he seems to ask himself is whether the self-created tumult is a REQUISITE for his art or an IMPEDIMENT?

The Other Side of the Wind is available for streaming on Netflix. It is accompanied by two documentaries on Orson Welles and his final movie: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making, also both available to stream on Netflix.

In each of four decades Orson Welles produced unforgettable works of art. Citizen Kane is an undisputed masterpiece, and I consider A Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight to be great movies. The Other Side of the Wind is in that class. Thirty-three years after it’s creator’s death, it’s one of the best movies of 2018.

or decades

Coming up on TV: Fat City

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Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges in FAT CITY

Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the under appreciated Fat City (1972) on June 18.  Stacy Keach plays a boxer on the slide, his skills unraveled by his alcoholism. He inspires a kid (a very young Jeff Bridges), who becomes a boxer on the rise.  Keach and Susan Tyrrell give dead-on performances as pathetic sad sack barflies.  Tyrrell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

The great director John Huston shot the film in Stockton, and Fat City is a time capsule for the Central Valley in the early 70s.

Fat City has made two of my lists: Best Boxing Movies and Best Drug Movies.

Susan Tyrrell in FAT CITY

Let There Be Light: groundbreaking look at those who have endured too much

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Let There Be Light is an extraordinary documentary about WW II soldiers being treated for psychological war wounds.  Made in 1946 by fabled director John Huston, Let There Be Light was suppressed by the US military until 1980 and had since been available only in a grainy, almost unintelligible version.  Thankfully, it was restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation in 2011, and now can be viewed for free on its website.

Huston followed a group of soldiers as they entered a hospital and engaged in treatment until their release from the service eight weeks later.  Huston shot 70 hours of film, which he winnowed down to this one-hour documentary.  We see the doctors use individual talk therapy, group therapy, hypnosis and sodium pentathol.  We know the condition as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  At the time, it was popularly known as “shell-shock” or “combat fatigue” and termed “psychoneurosis” or “neuropsychosis” by the doctors.

Modern therapists will find the treatment primitive and the movie too optimistic (there’s a sense that everybody is OK after eight weeks in the hospital), but that shouldn’t obscure the compassion of the doctors and the heartbreaking stories of the men.  This was a moment in medical history when the public still needed to learn that this was a psychiatric condition, not cowardice or weakness – and that the condition was treatable.  The narrator (Huston’s father Walter) repeatedly emphasizes that these men have endured more than any human could be expected to bear.

Watch Let There Be Light HERE.