The top half of my Netflix/Orson Welles double header begins w/last year's release of Welles last completed project (as per instructions he left to create this final vision). Shot over a few years during the early 70's, this Felliniesque journey of a troubled filmmaker's screening of his latest project has as much to do w/the eccentricities of a vaulted artist as a critique on the system which placed him in such high standing. John Huston plays the director who has made a sexually twinged magna opus (whose footage is the film within the film) where a scantily clad woman (or nude which she is for the majority of the run time) being pursued by some vain, dim pretty boy as they meet, copulate & find themselves in the ruins of some back-lot village where sensuality trumps dialogue or any sense of pragmatically driven narrative. That the yes men & sycophants who populate the screening put the director in the mind of someone who's time has passed (a prevailing theme which would haunt Welles' professional & personal career for the majority of his life) who's latest film feels of the moment (the copious nudity & non linear structure) & also a plateau to his well regarded past. Not a film for all tastes, this film almost dares cineastes to watch it to see a once touted genius who's fallen on creative dry times make a final stab towards relevance. Also starring Peter Bogdanovich & Edmond O'Brien as members of the director's staff w/many luminaries of the time (Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom, Paul Mazursky) making cameos.
Review of The Other Side of the Wind
