Wells takes us through two "stories," sort of. One is of the last night of an aging filmmaker, dismissed as venerated but no longer relevant, and unable to adjust to the changing world. He is throwing a party to screen his unfinished final film to drum up support for the project and is visibly aggravated by all he has to go through to get the funding to make his art. The second is the film itself, unfinished, chaotic, purposefully abstract and sexual. Both a comment on the world of cinema changing.
Huston's character (a stand in for Wells himself or perhaps Huston himself, or just their generation?) is immediately unlikable to a 21st century eye. Completely comfortable with his place above those he degrades through his language (he freely makes sexist comments, throws around homophobic words, uses racist slang) and frustrated that he can't command what he used to be able to, his Hannaford is worn and unremorseful. He smiles smugly throughout the film like he doesn't give a shit. But as the film goes on we see he does, and does in ways he won't admit.
He is hectically discussed throughout, even to his face as if he's not even there, and dissected, everyone giving their take on the old man. While he is victim of their harping he is also fully responsible for it. He has set himself in this position and has the gall to then be pissed about it.
But as the film progresses we get more and more of his sadness and longing. He is more frequently confronted about his feelings for the young man who stars in his film, a man he drove away through his bullish behavior. He never is willing to confront how his feelings for this man destroy so much of who he has made himself to be. He is the old guard, fraudulent and oppressive, and his own created identity and power structure is destroying him. He is classically tragic in that way. Undone by his own doing.
The world moves on without him, he becomes just an interesting anecdote. There is something beautifully satisfying about watching him self-destruct unwillingly, refusing to embrace what would make him whole, refusing to change. He is a symbol of what was, what needed to change, and what refuses to acquiesce to the future. The Other Side of the Wind doesn't set up pity for him. Instead there is more of a sense of loss of what he could have been if he'd let himself. He is his own villain. I think the thing that made me truly feel in this film is the way it was a portrait of refusal and the loss that comes from that.
The Other Side of the Wind is visually fascinating. His film within a film is gorgeous in its nonsense. It's the kind of sequence which would make a lovely set of stills. Kodor and Random's beauty is captured so lovingly by Wells and shot so perfectly it is a treat for our eyes. I loved the juxtaposition of that with the almost nightmarish party sequences (maybe it is the introvert in me that made them so terrifying for me). Wells' incredible eye (like he does in the gorgeous Touch of Evil) crafts something beautiful here that is a joy to watch.
We'll never know how Wells would have finished this film, if he even would have. But getting to see it put together like this is like getting a small piece of the past back. It is very much a work of its time and seeing it now does feel a bit like archeology. Putting together pieces of the way culture used to work and seeing that inner workings deconstructed by someone in that time. So different than we would do it today. It is fascinating, and it is lovely, and it is painful, and it is tragic. All the things we would want Wells' last film to be.
The Other Side of the Wind
Starring: John Huston, Oja Kodor, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, Bob Random
Writer/Director: Orson Wells
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