Tuesday 2 October 2018

Finished At Last,

the film that most thought would never be completed,


The Other Side Of The Wind, a film directed, co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Orson Welles, has been finished at last, it stars John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and Oja Kodar, the film is a satire of both the passing of Classic Hollywood and the avant-garde filmmakers of the New Hollywood of the 1970s, the film was shot in an unconventional mockumentary style in both color and black-and-white,

   it also incorporated a film-within-a-film that spoofed the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, principal photography started in 1970, 

after many stops and starts, principal photography ended in 1976, after being in limbo for several decades, it had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, on August 31, 2018, it is scheduled to be released on November 2, 2018, by Netflix,

 so what is it all about? Jake Hannaford is an aging Hollywood director who was killed in a car crash on his 70th birthday, just before his death, Hannaford was trying to revive his flagging career by making a flashy film, laden with gratuitous sex scenes and violence, with mixed results, at the time of Hannaford's party, this film (titled The Other Side of the Wind) has been left unfinished after its star stormed off the set, for reasons not immediately apparent to the audience, a screening of some incomprehensible parts of Hannaford's unfinished experimental film take place, in order to attract "end money" from the film studio boss Max David, 

 as the party continues, Hannaford gets progressively drunker, He is washing his face in the bathroom when he tearfully breaks down in front of Otterlake, asking for the young director's help to revive his flagging career, and desperately trying to sober up before returning to the screening of his unfinished film, a power outage in the middle of Hannaford's party interrupts the screening mid-way, the party continues by lantern-light, and eventually reconvenes to an empty drive-in cinema, where the last portion of Hannaford's film is screened, 


Oja Kodar whom appears in the film within a film, will the release of the film be a success? well we will have to wait and see, but if you are an Orson fan it will be one not to be missed, still in must seem strange for Oja, now 77 years old, to see herself walking across a barren landscape when it was filmed all of those years ago.


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