The Other Side of the Wind

R

Released Nov 2, 2018

2 hr. 2 min.

Comedy

Drama

List

83%

99 Reviews

Tomatometer

58%

250+ Ratings

Audience Score

After years of exile in Europe, a maverick director returns to Hollywood to finish his comeback movie, "The Other Side of the Wind."

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Netflix

Watch The Other Side of the Wind with a subscription on Netflix.

Critics Consensus

A satisfying must-watch for diehard cineastes, The Other Side of the Wind offers the opportunity to witness a long-lost chapter in a brilliant filmmaker's career.

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Alec B

The concept is deceptively pedestrian but it allows Welles to play around with a lot of different ideas. Most interesting is his examination of how "Auteur Machismo" is ultimately just bullshit, perfectly articulated by the pretentious and shallow film within the film.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/05/24

Full Review

Kyle M

When Orson Welles comes to mind, he's identified as the auteur behind "Citizen Kane", praised debatably the greatest movie of all time according to some ranks but out of modest respect is considerably one of the greatest. According to the documentary titled after his proclamation "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead", released as complementary to his final film "The Other Side of the Wind", it became his curse. The documentary focuses on the final fifteen years of his life when hoping to put it to rest with not just a comeback in Hollywood but closure to the cinematic achievement he perfected then. He started making the aforementioned film in 1970 with principal photography finished in 1976, but complications prevented him from ever finishing it. Welles passed away in 1985, but those closest to him made a promise to bring his final vision to life. After 48 years of production, "The Other Side of the Wind" finally gets unveiled. The documentary functions routinely but also rather briefly when structuring the portrait of who Orson Welles was. Director Morgan Neville ("Won't You Be My Neighbor?") has taken the initiatives in following after the formerly-unfinished film with accounts going over the decades-long process of finalizing it, especially executive producer Peter Bogdanovich who had a major role in reviving Welles' career through his writings whilst becoming a lifelong friend. We're given minimal biographical details of Welles' beginning, but mainly focus on those fifteen years and what thoughtful insights came up during that period. Frankly, his previous milestones deserved their own sole focus per pre-acknowledged.ds on. Considering the project was his last as a filmed whole, Welles' complex stature gets further reflected and better grasped by personally connective parallels as he strived for artistic perfections. The performatively-committed "Other Side of the Wind" starred John Huston, who frequently directed Welles as their collaboration came full circle, as a legendary but jaded Hollywood director at a media-swamped party celebrating his 70th birthday, screening his avant-garde film-in-progress. He's met with admirers and given unsettling questions about his cast, who appears silent across exploitive expressionism without a solid direction. Set as a comeback and settled as a closure to his "Citizen Kane" expectations, which is inferior but narratively comparable by modernized focus, Welles embraced the artistic state the cinema was going towards in the 70s with a mixed reception by acculturation, but the coordinated cinematography is traced with his signature. From watching "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead" prior as it persuaded to turn the viewing into a double feature and gaining the insightful retrospective, it's personally underlined as he saw himself through Huston's character layered with satirical appreciation towards the director who boosted his career. Both films were released concurrently and proved a worthy double feature clocking around 3.5 hours. If you start with the documentary, you'll be prepped with prerequisite knowledge by enhanced understanding behind Welles' complex stature and the complications he faced that are sporadically occurring in the film industry today. It's also a successful capture of his human side that solidifies the imagery buildup Neville focused on. If you start with the filmic narration, the viewing will make the documentary what it actually is: a lengthy featurette you'd access amid home media's accompaniment to learn more about the history behind the picture. Either way's equally effective, and it helps appreciate Orson Welles' craft even more over what he values, especially the spiritual connections he made with his pictures as reference commentary he profoundly relates to. Film study mainly links Orson Welles to nurtured cinema enthusiasts discovering his prominence towards the form, and the rightly titled "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead" feeds insight that furthers appreciation towards projected creativity – or/and mastery. (B+)

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

10/23/23

Full Review

luca d

"The other side of the wind" is an absolutely exceptional product. The work done to integrate the old recordings with new reconstructions makes the experience even more immersive. I think it is an obligatory step for a cinema enthusiast because it allows you to see an often little told side of Hollywood and the film world in general.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

09/05/23

Full Review

Audience Member

So many great performances and cinematography truly show Welles is worthy the label Auteur. If only today’s Hollywood would give us film to make us think instead of only mind numbing fodder for the discount bin.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/12/23

Full Review

Julianna H

I really wanted to love it. But this movie reflects everything wrong with the baby boomer generation. So self absorbed and full of immature sexually charged concepts. Can't we move on as a society? The time for this crap is over, is it? I sure hope it it!

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

01/06/23

Full Review

t z

I'll give it 5 because I need to counter all the bad reviews by people who didn't get it. It's really more between a 3 and a 4, but for what it is it's a 5. Welles didn't have a lot of money to make it. What he did have was talent and time. Still it took him the last 15 years of his life, not counting the decade of pre-production and he still died with it unfinished. It was mired in legal and technical difficulties and risked being added to his list of unfinished films. Fortunately the money was raised and the legal red tape cleared away. That left only the technical problems to overcome. Thanks to wells notes and a work print of a portion of the film as well as the increase of computer power over the intervening years it wasn't insurmountable. The miles of footage was digitized and cataloged and edited into a mostly coherent cut that approximates Welles' vision for the film. The documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead is as engaging as the final product, maybe more so, and makes a great companion piece to it. Welles himself said profetically, "Supposing during the course of making the picture that it's more interesting hearing the actors and myself talk about it than making the picture. That will be the picture."

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

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Orson Welles

Director

John Huston

Jake Hannaford

Susan Strasberg

Julie Rich

Lilli Palmer

Zarah Valeska

Dennis Hopper

Self

Peter Bogdanovich

Brooks Otterlake

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Ben Sachs

Chicago Reader

It's impossible to say whether the resulting product is what Welles would have created, but what exists certainly provides much food for thought.

Feb 24, 2020

Full Review

J. Hoberman

Harper's Magazine

Sure to be wildly overpraised and cursorily dismissed, The Other Side of the Wind is often awful and frequently great, occasionally at the same time. The main thing is that it gives Welles the last word.

Jan 7, 2019

Full Review

Bill Keveney

USA Today

Overall, Wind magnificently displays Welles' filmmaking brilliance while baring the aging auteur's frailties and frustrations.

Nov 30, 2018

Full Review

Josh Parham

Next Best Picture

Ultimately, it is guesswork by outsiders to determine Welles’s true intention for execution, and knowing that always prevents a barrier from becoming truly engaged with the storytelling.

Rated: 5/10

May 29, 2022

Full Review

Taylor Baker

Drink in the Movies

Episode 18: The Danse Macabre

Rated: 90/100

Sep 2, 2021

Full Review

Matt Cipolla

Film Monthly

Orson Welles' final film is a staccato, bitter [skewering of] modernity, standing highest when it falls into itself à la Godard and Vertov.

Rated: 4/5

Jul 25, 2020

Full Review

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Synopsis

After years of exile in Europe, a maverick director returns to Hollywood to finish his comeback movie, "The Other Side of the Wind."

Director: Orson Welles
Executive Producer: Jon Anderson, Dominique Antoine, Peter Bogdanovich, Olga Kagan
Screenwriter: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar
Distributor: Netflix
Production Co: Royal Road Entertainment
Rating: R (Graphic Nudity|Some Language|Sexual Content)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Nov 2, 2018, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 3, 2018
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

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