Four stars. Rated TV-MA, for nudity and strong sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.10.20
Mention Orson Welles, and everybody — everybody — immediately thinks of Citizen Kane.
Film buffs are equally likely to cite The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight.
 |
| While Peter Bogdanovich (left, holding megaphone) waits to deliver his next line, cinematographer Gary Graver adjusts lights according to the very precise instructions given by Orson Welles (seated). |
Baby-boomers are more apt to remember Welles’ ubiquitous TV commercials for Paul Masson — “We will sell no wine before its time” — which were parodied mercilessly by stand-up comics.
But in Hollywood, during his final few decades — Welles died on Oct. 10, 1985 — he was just as notorious for an expanding list of unfinished projects. They include:
• Don Quixote, filmed — off and on — between 1957 and ’69 (!), when production was halted after the death of star Francisco Reiguera, although Welles continued editing footage well into the 1970s;
• The Deep, based on Charles Williams’ novel Dead Calm, shot between 1966 and ’69, but left unfinished when financing evaporated, and completion was rendered impossible when star Laurence Harvey died in 1973 (Williams’ novel later was filmed by entirely different hands in 1989, with Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill); and
• The Dreamers, based on two short stories by Karen Blixen, which went no further than two 10-minute segments Welles filmed in 1979.
And one other, which has become the stuff of legend.
Documentarian Morgan Neville’s They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead — a Netflix original — depicts the fascinating, frustrating and ultimately heartbreaking saga of what Welles intended as his last great film: The Other Side of the Wind.
Neville’s project also gains class and dramatic heft from Alan Cumming’s arch on-camera narration, filmed in gorgeous monochrome by cinematographer Danny Grunes.
Welles’ film was cheekily autobiographical, although he repeatedly denied as much while giving cheerful interviews during the many years that production limped along. He took a “film within a film” approach; the primary action is set during a lavish party being thrown for once-famed film director Jake Hannaford (played by John Huston), who has been struggling to complete a commercially viable feature, in order to revive his faded career.
