Unfinished Orson Welles Film to Finally Get Released?

While Orson Welles is best known for his magnum opus Citizen Kane, the man who is today considered a genius of cinema had frequent trouble getting films made in his lifetime. Welles would often take on film projects that had little funding and, in some instances, would have to start and stop the production process numerous times whenever he had funds available. One of those films was The Other Side of the Wind, which Welles started in the late 1960s and continued to work on throughout the 70s, but funding issues involving the Shah of Iran after the Iranian Revolution put an end to the process. Welles said the film was “96% complete” in 1972, and by 1979 he reportedly had edited forty minutes of the film. But with the political turmoil in Iran, Welles saw his funds dry up, much of the film negative was locked in a vault in France, and he died in 1985 before the film was finished. But reports are saying that we are close to finally seeing a release of the film over twenty-five years after Welles‘ death. After the jump I’ll go through the complicated process it took to get the film close to a release.

Peter Bogdanovich, Welles‘ friend and a talented film director himself, not only appeared in the film but let a more-or-less penniless Orson Welles live in his house for two years while Welles edited the film. In fact, many scenes were shot in Bogdanovich‘s house. As early as 2004 Bogdanovich has been making various announcements about restoring the film, but has ran into various problems with different people owning different parts of the film (because Welles took financing from more-or-less anyone willing to open a wallet to him, you can imagine how muddled up the rights are!)

But according to The Observer, it seems that those issues are finally clearing up. Bogdanovich is reportedly in possession of Welles‘ editing notes — many of you might remember that one of Welles‘ best films, A Touch of Evil (1958), was re-edited in 1998 based on Welles‘ notes also, and we ended up with a far superior film. Hopefully Welles‘ notes on The Other Side of the Wind are extensive enough to compile an estimation of what he would have wanted.

The Other Side of the Wind stars John Huston, Bogdanovich, Dennis Hopper, and Oja Kodar (the woman who was Welles’ lover in the final years of his life, who also co-wrote the film). Huston plays Jake Hannaford, a film director celebrating his 70^th birthday and attempting to direct a “hip” film in one last grasp to remain relevant. Like Welles‘ masterpiece Citizen Kane, the story unfolds in a non-linear fashion using conversations (in this case during the birthday party) in order to give us the story of Hannaford’s troubled life.

I definitely am looking forward to this — I know many would prefer that the film is never released since Welles never completed it, but it seems that Welles had every intention of releasing the film if financial trouble had not taken the film itself out of his hands. Leaving extensive editing notes, after all, is a pretty clear sign that Welles wanted it to be finished at some point.

Of course, that’s only my opinion. What’s yours? Let us know how you feel about Welles‘ film finally getting a release!