The story is intriguing, but due to the turbulent nature of production, some of the performances are extremely uneven, particularly Peter Bogdanovich, who alternates between grounded confidence and nervous ham sandwich.
The idea of the footage coming from several different film and audio stocks woven together to present the narrative works to the film's advantage, especially in preserving the original performances (particularly John Huston's, which is of course excellent). It benefits the film as armor against any criticisms of visual and audio quality, as well as perceived composition issues.
Parts of the art-film-within-the-art-film are edited with out-of-place, slightly modern techniques (note the whole nightclub scene), and the whole thing is processed with a bizarrely clear, almost digital quality, with clearly modern sound design assets (the sex scene features some extremely vulgar wet-sounding copulation squelches they could only have gotten a way with in our century). The footage as a mechanism for backstory to the main plot is incredibly nuanced for the era in which it was conceived, completely unbelievable for the time.
Very much of the movie is stupidly real, notably the character motivations and dialog, even if the acting can be hokey at times. A movie like this had never been done before, but Welles' interviews about the movie seeded the idea, and now many movies with a similar aesthetic can be seen. Even though it was released in 2018, it still gets points for originality.
This film is an excellent lesson in salvage and preservation.
The idea of the footage coming from several different film and audio stocks woven together to present the narrative works to the film's advantage, especially in preserving the original performances (particularly John Huston's, which is of course excellent). It benefits the film as armor against any criticisms of visual and audio quality, as well as perceived composition issues.
Parts of the art-film-within-the-art-film are edited with out-of-place, slightly modern techniques (note the whole nightclub scene), and the whole thing is processed with a bizarrely clear, almost digital quality, with clearly modern sound design assets (the sex scene features some extremely vulgar wet-sounding copulation squelches they could only have gotten a way with in our century). The footage as a mechanism for backstory to the main plot is incredibly nuanced for the era in which it was conceived, completely unbelievable for the time.
Very much of the movie is stupidly real, notably the character motivations and dialog, even if the acting can be hokey at times. A movie like this had never been done before, but Welles' interviews about the movie seeded the idea, and now many movies with a similar aesthetic can be seen. Even though it was released in 2018, it still gets points for originality.
This film is an excellent lesson in salvage and preservation.