The Other Side of the Wind

Our Revels Now Have Ended
or
Tonight is for the Freako's and the Snoops, Lady

There is a story, but it might be apocryphal. What is definitely true is that Steven Spielberg bought the "Rosebud" sled from Citizen Kane for $60,5000. What is also true is that Orson Welles was a master film-maker always looking for money. It is said that Spielberg's purchase galled Welles that someone would buy memorabilia from one of his films, but not invest in a new one, but not enough that he couldn't strike back: "But" I said "Steven, we burned the sled!"*

Enough re-hashing of the process that brought about the release of The Other Side of the Wind—the film Orson Welles was working on since his return to Hollywood in 1970. The story's been told enough and we now have the product streaming on Netflix (with a limited release in theaters), so it's now possible to see what all the fuss—and the wait—was about.

The Other Side of the Wind is the story of the last day—July 2nd to be exact—in the life of a well-regarded film director, J.J. "Jake" Hannaford (John Huston), which takes place at a 70th birthday party for him, while he is filming—and trying to save—his current production, entitled "The Other Side of the Wind", an attempt to make a "with-it" youth film as his comeback.

Oh, very. It's the sickest story I've ever thought up in my life.

If Welles had completed his film as intended, it would have been celebrated for the radical way it was filmed and edited. Almost defying continuity issues, it was filmed in a variety of formats—35 mm color for Jake's film-in-progress, and a combination of color and black-and-white in different formats and grains for the party sequences—the conceit being that it's all "found footage" from different sources documenting the party for Jake—and for promoting the film.

For the most part, it works, although there are some intimate conversations that seem devoid of cameras in the vicinity that throws some cold water on the concept, and the film (as is) doesn't take much advantage of reactions to the cameras as an invasion—perhaps it can be explained away as ego by the participants, but you'd think some of them would be careful of what they're saying...or doing when they know they're being watched...and recorded.

The "found footage" is just one aspect of the film, its spine, as it were. The fact of the movie is that it is full-to-bursting with plot, sub-plot, and sub-text, so that it must have seemed a daunting task to corral so much...everything. It is chaos in the making and is at its best when it flies by in Welles' quick (even by today's standards) editing of the sequences. There are other segments where the cutting is respectful, even gingerly, to make sure that points are made. Whether this is part of Welles' blue-print or of the subsequent editors, one shouldn't speculate. One can't really know.

According to a young American critic, one of the great discoveries of our age is the value of boredom as an artistic subject. If that is so, Antonioni deserves to be counted as a pioneer and founding father. His movies are perfect backgrounds for fashion models. Maybe there aren’t backgrounds that good in Vogue, but there ought to be. They ought to get Antonioni to design them.

It's even difficult to decide what to focus on in one's appraisal of it: should one make more of its film-within-a-film, which Welles was using to parody the formless art-house flicks of the late 1960's-early 1970's? Dialogue-less (except for overheard direction by Hannaford via bullhorn) and nearly plot-less, and completely voyeuristic, it follows a woman of supposedly Native American descent (Oja Kodar playing "The Actress") as she leaves a steam-room, is seen by a guy on a motorcycle (Bob Random, playing actor "John Dale") and is followed into a discotheque, then into a car that turns into an erotic episode and finally follows the two onto an abandoned film-set. 

"The movie" is noticeable for its gratuitous nudity, mostly of "The Actress," but also of the "Dale" character—Welles did much the same thing with Kodar on F for Fake, his camera ogling his longtime companion, who was lover, co-conspirator, and muse (Welles gives her a co-screenwriting credit on The Other Side of the Wind)—and as much as Kodar's nudity is a reflection of Welles' fixation—and love—one must also consider the "Dale" character's nudity as also a fixation of sorts, but of Welles' subject, the director Hannaford, who "rescued" his star from the ocean and decided to make him a star of his film...as he has (we learn) with many other male actors...all of whom have decided to not show up for Hannaford's tribute.

He is all the big, macho, hairy-chested fellas...basically Ford, Huston, maybe with some Hemingway thrown in...it's all this big macho thing, you know, which I'm so fed up with, you know. Although I love it, I'm very ambivalent about it, you know, I love Ford and all, but I also think it's a lot of shit that he hit (Fonda)and I love Hemingway and I think it's a lot of shit. It's all that (laughs)You know. And I love this man.And I hate him. And that's what I think is so great about this story—I want to love him and hate him and show him in all that thing.

Hannaford's character is commented on a lot in reviews as auto-biographical (and Hannaford's professional circumstances can be compared to Welles), but he's really a combination, a polyglot of different people—as Charles Foster Kane was, really—of different artists with a macho bent: Hemingway, certainly (his death by suicide was also on July 2nd in the year 1961), but also John Ford, Howard Hawks, and others of the "old" directors whose behavior was overtly macho, while leaning more to the female side of things by nature. Ford's treatment of women was extremely sentimentalized and his favorite actress, Maureen O'Hara, had her suspicions about him, while many of Hawks' works has interesting threads of homosexuality through them, with his many women who were "one of the boys," his frequent emasculation of his male stars (particularly Cary Grant), and...well...ever seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? 

Hannaford is a man's man, but he doth protest too much. The story is that he sleeps with his actor's girl-friends to gain some control over them, but is that the reason...is that really the story...? The reason the picture is in some trouble is because it's in a shambles that might be unrecoverable. The reason? Hannaford's treatment of Dale has caused him to walk off the set and not return to work—they either have to re-shoot, with the film already in financial trouble—or carry on with work-arounds (one of the jokes of the film is all the many "Dale" mannequins being carted around as stand-ins for the film—Hannaford ends up shooting them...with a rifle...not a camera).

The hope is that Hannaford's reputation as a great director can secure finishing funds for his experimental film, even though it appears to be in trouble and not on a par with his previous work that is studied, written about, and lectured on by academics, film-buffs and students and by contemporary film-makers who emulate him, and, ironically, overshadow him in the film-marketplace. One of those is Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), a former critic-now-turned-successful director, who enjoys a revered reputation in the new Hollywood, surpassing his idol and mentor. But, who turns him down when he is outright asked for money. Hannaford eventually sees all of his partners and apologists leave him for other opportunities and abandon any sense of loyalty to him, like a mass-reflection of the turning of Prince Hal against Falstaff when he is made King, and refuting what he says earlier in the party: "We imitation Hannaford's have got to stick together."

I was thinking last night about what you told me about these old directors who can't get jobs. And I was thinking of those great conductors...who were at the height of their power after 75.It's why Lear is my favorite play. I think it's just terrible what happens to old people...and the public isn't interested in it. That's always been why Lear is a play that people hate. The only thing that keeps people alive in their old age...is power.

Hannaford puts up a good act, playing the part of the sage. But, his fear is that he's playing the Fool. As a director, he has absolute control—over those who choose to give it to him. But, the money-men are beyond his grasp, and once the money is unattainable, his control is, as well. He has contempt for the scholars and syncophants who fawn over him and use their cameras on him, as much as he uses his camera on others—Welles has sometimes talked about the effect that filming a location brings, that he considers it dead, empty, and no longer of use. These hangers-on are nostalgists, endlessly cataloging the past, with no regard for the future...or the present.

And that's intolerable for Hannaford. He has no truck with being held as a symbol, a relic, a legacy, a thing of the past, with far more yesterdays than tomorrows. Over the night, he puts on the show of the Great Director, but as the scotches are drained, and his choices become fewer as hope is lost, he cracks, becoming "Lear in Hollywood," trapped by his own character and the actions that stem from it.

The one member of the cast and crew who sticks it out for the showings of Hannaford's work in progress (the final site of which is a dilapidated drive-in theater) to the end is The Actress, who's still there when the dawn washes away the image on the screen. Is she there out of loyalty, out of vanity, or what? What is it? The movie engages the mind and leaves things ambiguously, other than Hannaford's fate (and even that leaves questions), but also the remanants or evidence left behind that is the film in its entirety.

One aspect of Welles' work has always been the startling way he makes you look at the world anew, (for me, anyway) as if seeing it with new eyes. That doesn't happen with The Other Side of the Wind. It's world is one of decay and destruction. But, it does stick in the memory and doesn't fade away, in a threadbare skein of ambiguity. It's been on my mind constantly, as I've been trying to unravel its complexities and aspects. In total, it does not seem to be a great work, a failed attempt—how much of this is due to Welles' conception or the ultimate piecing together of it is impossible to say. But, the details are vast in number and mysterious in implication. It cannot be ignored, dismissed or forgotten.

And its message is, as so many of the stories that Welles has told over the years,  a melancholy one: that art, career, life may be a temporary thing, as bright, brief and transitory as fireworks. 

Beautiful in its moment, yes, but fleeting.

* Quotes in the review are from Peter Bogdanovich's recordings of Welles that he made from 1968 to 1973 for his book "This is Orson Welles." What's neat about it is the audio-book presentation of it is the actual recordings.

Hangmen Also Die!

Hangmen Also Die! (Fritz Lang, 1943)  We've talked about Anthropoid and Hitler's Madman, but another film is inspired by the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and its subsequent murderous reprisals. It is an original story written by German playwright Bertolt Brecht (he of "The Threepenny Opera" and "The Ballad of Mack the Knife") and another German expatriate, director Fritz Lang. 

The Czech plot to kill Heydrich makes up a very small part of Hangmen Also Die! and the destruction of Lidice isn't even mentioned, the ramifications of the assassination cast in miniature with the murder of 400 souls as reprisals for keeping the identity of the gunman (only one in Brecht and Lang's screenplay, not the group of four  who carried out the actual killing) a secret from Nazi investigators. The plot hews closer to Lang's world of spies, secret societies, and hiding in plain sight.

Heydrich (played by an overwrought Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), appears in only one opening scene and rides out of the small studio representation of a Czech street never to be seen again*; the attack happens off-camera, in the style of other Lang films where danger lurks just outside the film frame (most of the murders happen out of sight except for the penultimate ones that close the film on a cautionary, mournful note).

The only things the film has in common with the real events is that there was a Heydrich, he was killed by Czech partisans, and the Nazi's started a man-hunt that resulted in the execution of civilians in retribution. There is no organized murder and destruction of an entire city in revenge.

Just after Heydrich's assassination a lone figure calling himself Karel Vanek (Brian Donlevy, looking very "chalant"**) runs into the busy city street looking for his getaway vehicle—it (driven by Lionel Stander) has been directed to Gestapo headquarters for leaving the engine running and wasting precious commodities. He asks a woman, Masha Novotny (Anna Lee), if she's seen the vehicle and she tells him the driver was arrested. Vanek scurries off when news of Heydrich's attack hits the streets, steps ahead of Nazi agents looking for him. Masha mis-directs them and he is able to escape. 

But, he finds no shelter after the attack, and in desperation, shows up at the Novotny apartment, where, with only the slimmest of cover-stories, he is invited for dinner and given a bed for the night. Masha's father (Walter Brennan), a history professor recently dismissed from the University for his political views and now tutoring his former students, suspects Vanek of killing Heydrich, yet provides him accommodations in sympathy.

"Someone at the door?"

Before long, the Nazi's come calling, and Novotny is arrested as a suspect in the murder, as well as 400 others to be held in detention until the murderer is found. As an added incentive for the killer to turn himself in (or his whereabouts revealed) the Nazis will kill 40 of the hostages at a time until the case is closed. In desperation, Masha seeks out the man she's deduced has posed as Karel Vanek—distinguished Prague surgeon Dr. Franz Svoboda—and begs him to turn himself in and save her father, something the partisans have forbidden him to do.

"You have it all nicely worked out, haven't you? If I tell them, 
then all my family will be shot! If I keep silent only my father 
will be shot! In other words, your "simple statement of fact" is 
we're all lost because we were generous enough to save your life! 
You're just a cold-blooded coward! You're no better than Heydrich himself! 
Even the Gestapo couldn't be as inhuman as you are!"

It's a moral quandary and Brecht and Lang increase it by making the assassin a doctor, betraying his hippocratic oath even when doing nothing still does harm. Meanwhile, Gestapo inspector Gruber (Alexander Granach) pursues all leads trying to piece together who the culprit is, particularly Masha, who knows that at any time, her father might be killed.

The partisans, meanwhile are working to pin the assassination on another party, a businessman and Nazi partisan who drew up the list of the 400 Czech's to be taken prisoner, Czech partisans seeming to have a overarching sense of irony. But, can they convince the Nazi's in time to prevent the slaughter?

Lang's concern here is in the conspiracy—it frequently is in his films—and how background forces, hiding in plain sight, can influence the orbits of people's lives. The main gist is that the Germans have taken over Czechoslovakia as an occupying force, but the occupied, in turn, can disrupt any machinery, no matter how precise, given enough will and organization. You fight power with power. You fight those seeking information with disinformation, and any search for a lone individual can be neutered by unfocusing it. The Germans do things with uniforms and ceremony. The partisans are masked—even surgeons' masks— and are at their most powerful when they are unknown, ordinary and a part of the landscape—nobodies.

This is not a history lesson, and, if so, only in the broadest strokes. It takes one incident and brings to light the Lang world-view: that the work of collective, coordinated individuals can disrupt the machinery of despots, technology, corporate interests and political systems that oppress them and threaten to crush them in the clock-work gears of their seemingly perpetual motion. But to derail those gears takes resistant bones and iron wills to make them seize up.

There's a telling shot in Hangmen Also Die! where word of Heydrich's assassination begins to be whispered in a darkened theater and applause starts to ripple through the audience. A Nazi lackey calls a halt to the movie and, flush with a power he only thinks he has, demands to know who applauded. "No one applauded." says a voice in the crowd, belying the obvious truth. And before one of the audience members decks the Nazi for being too pushy with his wife, there is a shot that must have been very powerful in the movie theaters—it's a shot of the theater movie-screen, an extension of OUR view of OUR movie screen, like an optical illusion where we see farther than just the projected image into the movie's world. And the movie crowd of Hangmen Also Die! look back at us, safe in our seats, defiantly, almost accusingly, as if to ask "What are YOU going to do?"

It's chilling: that one image unites us with the plight of the Czech movie-goers and challenges us, making us a participant in their situation in a way no 3-D image ever could.

There's genius there.

"Nobody applauded."
The movie stares back at its audience.

* Except for one surreal hospital scene comprised of this shot:

** The opposite of nonchalant.