|
Wish I could be more enthusiastic after watching The Other Side of the Wind.
It works as a time capsule, and as an experiment, but was still a little too slapdash to qualify as high quality.
Part of that may be it's time capsule status. At the time it was being made, Hollywood was first strugging with it's insularity and power. But by now, the story of all the facade and braggadocio behind the auteur.
It was a long project, the last one, of Orson Welles. It was supposed to be a cinema verite view of the night of the screening of a towering director's final film. All the press, and hangers-on, and glad-handers whirling around an aging drunk seeking to sop up wisdom, celebrity, cachet, etc.
Welles never finished it, but it was cobbled and post-productioned together by others.
The closest I could summarize to describe it is if Robert Altman had made Entourage in the late 1960s, early 1970s.
That said, John Huston is impeccible. Almost worth watching for him alone. As memorable as he was in Chinatown. Reminiscent of Daniel Plainview in TWBB
|