Matthew Turner

This film, Welles’ legendarily, calamitously unfinished magnum opus, came out thirty or forty years late. It’s a time capsule, a biting and critical opinion piece of the industry at a particular time, and a glimpse of the kaleidoscope that was the mind of Orson Welles. Its haphazard filming is its evident, which is in parts obvious and irritating and in parts obvious but works anyway, its velocity covering its sins. Performances are a mixed bag, only a few excepted. I think the film’s legend and real-life drama over decades both complement and overshadow the product. Some of it is truly dazzling, and some of it, well, can be written off to its on-again-off-again, catch-as-cat-can production. Welles said his curse was having made Citizen Kane so early. With it he in some very real ways changed the medium, and in The Other Side of the Wind there is the feel he may have done so again if he had been able to complete it. We can’t say. The Kane Curse prevented him. The released version of the film, while a noble effort, isn’t Welles’. There’s a lot to like and to study, some at which to be amazed, and some that doesn’t quite ring. I do wish he had lived to complete his great experiment. 3/5