The Other Side of the Wind (2018), They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)

 'The Other Side of the Wind' was perhaps the most famous of Orson Welles multiple unfinished film projects. Shot off and on between 1970 and 1976 and never completely edited before Welles death in 1985. The film spent succeeding decades in a kind of legal limbo, in part I suspect because one of the films financers had been the brother of the Shah of Iran. Netflix of all entities was finally able to cut through the red tap and get the project fully edited, going off of Welles's notes as a guide.

The movie is extremely self referential, it is the story of a legendary film director (John Huston) struggling to complete what ends up being his final directorial project. Eerily Welles's surrogate character ends up dyeing at the age of 70, the same age at which Orson would eventually die. The movie consists principally of two parts, segments of the film that the director is working on, and a long night time party sequence at the autors ranch in the desert. 

The movie presents itself as a kind of documentary, or as Welles might call it a 'film essay'. Where 'Citizen Kane' is noted for its slow and graceful cinematography, with shots scrupulously composed, 'The Other Side of the Wind' is much more a collage with lots of sharp cuts. While the basic story is certainly there, and some sequences are very deliberately structed (especially in the movie within the movie, a satire of then popular 'European art atmosphere' pictures, also titled 'The Other Side of the Wind'), much of the film has an improvised quality. A fascinating, satirical time capsule, the film shows a late career Welles still interested in pushing boundaries. A solid swan song and hauntingly appropriate bookend to 'Citizen Kane'. ***1/2

'They'll Love Me When I'm Dead' is a companion documentary Netflix put together for the release of 'The Other Side of the Wind', and tells the story of that films long and troubled production and the decades that it ultimately took to get the movie out to the general public. It is a story almost as interesting as the movie itself. ***