Welles' Infamous Lost Movie Gets To The Silver Screen

Orson Welles'  legendary final lost and unfinished movie is being resurrected from its grave and will hit movie theaters sometime next year if all goes according to plan.

Welles, with Huston and Bagdanovich

The movie will be completed by well-known and accomplished director Peter Bogdanovich and will be screened to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Welles' birthday next year.  Entitled the 'The Other Side of the Wind ', Welles shot the movie between 1969 and 1976 and stars the famous actor-director John Huston. The films centers around a veteran film-maker struggling to complete his final movie despite the collapse of the Hollywood studio system and the rise of a new wave of younger directors.

Welles, who died in 1985 at the age of 70, never completed the film but he did leave behind a 45 minute edited work print.  For over three decades, a reported 1,000 reels of film languished in a Paris warehouse as legal battles over the rights to the film ensued.  Welles' daughter, Beatrice, the sole heir to the estate, finally won control but then stashed the film in a warehouse.

Ironically, Bogdanovich was asked by Welles to complete the movie in the event of his death. "He just turned to me rather casually during lunch and said, "I want you to promise that you will finish the picture if anything happens to me". I was shocked", Bogdanovich says, "Nothing is going to happen to you, I told him".  Bogdanovich adds, "He did some very complicated editing before it was taken away from him. I don't even know if I can approximate that kind of cutting because it is very fragmented and idiosyncratic. All we can do is the best we can, using the script, his notes and what he has left."

'The Other Side of the Wind' is both the title of the movie and the film-within-a-film. The legend surrounding the movie is that it was shot using a variety of film stock, from 8 to 35mm, is in both color and black and white, as well as, having still photography shots.  Welles had hoped to use the varying styles of film-making to simulate video footage taken by students, critics, and lesser known directors who had brought cameras to the movie's character, played by Huston, 70th birthday party, and which forms the centerpiece of the movie.

"This is like finding the Land of Oz or some lost tomb", has Joe Karp, who wrote a book about  Welles' lost movie. "This film is art imitating life and life imitating art.  It's become so mythical because of what happened with all the failures to finish it and the players involved."

The negative reels were controlled by Beatrice Welles under French law protecting artists' rights, and she had previously refused to allow them to be removed from storage. The 45 minute work print, however, was at her home in Primosten,Croatia, where Welles had placed it in 1975.  Beatrice, last year finally give permission, and released the work print (which is now in California) and the negative reels so the movie could be completed. The catalyst was the hundred-year anniversary and Beatrice said she was inspired to release the rights because of that. "Until now, this movie has been under lock and key under French law. I had the good fortune to be able to protect it all these years", says Beatrice Welles.

'The Other Side of the Wind' will be released via Royal Road (with distribution by one of the large studios, as yet unannounced) to coincide with Welles' 100th birthday on May 6, 2015.

This is a must see movie, from the maker of what many say is the best film ever made, Citizen Kane.

Jim