Movie review - "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" (1987) ***1/2

 The sort of movie you know going in what it's going to be like - tastefully made, with brilliant acting, hosannahs for Maggie Smith in the lead, nice production values, depressing.

People tried to make this for three decades, notably John Huston - the title role is a gift for an older actress. But it is depressing. She's got no money, no family, loses a job, realises she's wasted her life, hits the bottle, falls in love with a bounder (Bob Hoskins) who only wants her money.

It's nicely made. 

Movie review - "Moulin Rouge" (1952) ***

 Bright, colourful, interesting. Gets points for Jose Ferrer's casting. Not a conventional lead - I think this honesty sold it, along with the dancing, music, prositutes, drinking and sex. Being set in France gave it the right amount of distance for English speaking audiences - they could enjoy it at arms' length.

Zsa Zsa Gabor is great fun. A dollop of lightness. Excellent stunt casting.

I really liked the first half. The second half was more of a slog - the second girl was dull and the script became repetitive.

Love how Jose Ferrer was made insecure by the handsomeness of Peter Cushing!

Movie review - "Candy" (1968) **

 Cripes. The novel was popular, apparently. I don't think anyone reads it anymore. I haven't heard anything good about this movie so I was surprised to find myself enjoying it so much at first. It got off to a flying start with its groovy visuals and music and all star cast. Ewa Aulin isn't much of an actress but she's gorgeous - apparently Terry Southern wanted an All American type like Hayle Mills which would've been interesting but maybe too confronting.

Candy has a series of encounters with men who all manhandle her. This isn't a film that's strong on consent. What it does have is a series of encounters with stars, and you find yourself marking the vignettes. Richard Burton is hilarious as a Dylan Thomas type poet - he really commits and goes all out. Ringo Starr is less fun as a lechy Mexican. John Astin (in probably the second biggest role) is Candy's dad. Walter Matthau is a funny as a general but as Pauline Kael pointed out this sort of character was old hat by then. James Coburn is very funny as a doctor, he plays it in the right spirit as does Anita Pallenberg (sexy nurse) and John Huston.

There's an unfunny sequence with some Italian actors playing gangsters and an even less funnier one with Charles Aznavour as a hunchback and I wasn't wild with Marlon Brando in brownface as a guru or the cimax where she has sex with her dad Astin.

Look, the film exists and it's got stars in it and is weird. Everyone disowned it but it did business.

Movie review - "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967) ***1/2

 When I grew up Ray Stark was this figure of terror, especially in accounts of the David Begelman case and David Puttnam at Columbia, but he had classy taste. This was not obviously commercial material - although I guess it had sexy Southerners and included Elizabeth Taylor stripping off. Maybe that and horny Marlon Brando would've meant more a decade earlier.

Anyway the story - Brando is married to Elizabeth Taylor who is sleeping with Brian Keith who is married to Julie Harris, and Brando is hot for nude horse riding Robert Forster who is obsessed with Taylor. Zorro David is one of cinema's first gay besties - Harris' camp Filipino houseboy.

Brando's performance is interesting - he has a weird Southern accent and does a lot of emoting. I didn't buy it. 

The ending is directed in a slightly silly way IMHO but it seems to have influenced American Beauty - closeted military man kills object of desire.

Movie review - "Night of the Iguana" (1964) ****

 Tennessee Williams' last hit on Broadway was also his last hit in the cinemas. He's helped by gorgeous casting: Richard Burton as a defrocked priest (apparently the original choice was James Garner who wouldn't have been anywhere near as perfect), Ava Gardner as a lusty woman running a hotel in Mexco, Deborah Kerr as the seemingly prim woman with fire underneath.

I love its naughtiness - Sue Lyons is so keen to bonk Burton who's fighting her off, and Burton is this boozy loser who is still charismatic, and Gardner has these beach boys with maracas. A big role goes to Grayson Hall who is the antagonist, crucial to the story. John Huston clearly adores his characters and he's obviously loving working in Mexico.

This is a funny, fun joyous film. The constrant references to Burton sleeping with young girls is maybe a little dubious if you think about it too much. And like a lot of these William adaptations it's half an hour too long. But one of the best adaptations of the work - if you get the cating right there's a lot of fun to be had.

Novel review - "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" by B Traven

 Never read this before. Very enjoyable. Can see its appeal to Huston. Film follows it mostly but all the changes are good. We don't find out what happened to the Bruce Bennett character - he stays digging. Lots of emphasis on the hard work the people do. Dobbs only goes nuts at the end. His head it cut off! Lovely interwining of fate. Vicious criticism of the effect of the Catholic Church.

There's a sequence where we meet the bandits... they wipe out a whole train carriage, men, women, children, babies. Full on. The soldiers are ruthless. It's quite sympathetic to Mexico - it seems the writer lived there.

I enjoyed this a lot.

Marilyn Monroe Top Ten

 Not many films but anyway

1) Some Like It Hot (1959) - easy choice, so perfect... imagine Mitzi Gaynr in this. No thanks.

2) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - again, easy choice - shame she was never reteamed with Russell.

3) How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - glorious fun. Steals movie. 

4) Bus Stop (1956) - I recall Don Murray being creepy and Marilyn being great.

5) All About Eve (1951) - one scene but a great one.

6) The Misfits (1961) - flawed, but marvelous

7) Niagara (1953) - she's probably miscast but it's a good movie.

8) There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) - hokey story but those song and dance numbers!

9) The Seven Year Itch (1955) - icon.

10) Don't Bother to Knock (1952) - haven't seen this in ages just throwing it in there.

Movie review - "The Misfits" (1961) ***1/2

Legendary assembling of, well, legends - John Huston, Arthur Miller, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift... even Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter in their own more sensible way. Imagine the talk around that commissary.

Miller writes it like a play - there's entrances and exits - but it is carried off well, long dialogue scenes, much talk about people we don't see. It still works, because Huston has cast such superb actors.

Marilyn is heartbreakingly good - a superb part, she's smart, beaten down by life, warm.  Gable is terrific too as the uncomplicated but melancholic cowboy who has done a lot of living. Clift rounds out the trifecta. Of course Wallach and Ritter are fine.

I didn't realise that Wallach's part was so big - he's a love rival for Monroe. Maybe his part could've been blended with Clift's.

It's moving seeing these people who are about to die soon pal around. It's a hang out movie - like The Sun Also Rises should have been. 

I will admit I felt it went too long. It needed maybe a half hour cut out or something.

Movie review - "Freud: The Secret Passion" (1962) ***

 One of John Huston's lesser known works. This was made off the back of all those 50s adaptations of Broadway hits where a shrink got to the bottom of the Secret: Suddenly Last Summer, Three Faces of Eve, Home of the Brave, etc. They have the most famous shrink of all time getting to the bottom of the Secret involving Susannah York.

There's not a murder or something at stake though. It doesn't quite work and the film is too long but this is a stimulating, thought provoking movie. There's superb black and white photography and atmospheric Jerry Goldsmith score. It reminded me of the Corman Poe pictures.

I think dramatically the big issue is too much of the film consists of questions and answers as opposed to bringing the drama on its feet. We see flashbacks in terms of images rather than scenes and don't really get to know friends/family of York. I recognise that was probably a deliberate choice from Huston but don't feel it entirely works.

David McCallum is excellent as another patient. Larry Parks randomly pops up as a colleague of Freud - he isn't very good. Susan Kohner is superb as Freud's worried wife, as is York in a gift part. Best of all is Montgomery Clift whose crazy eyes, nervous intensity, intelligence and aura of self destruction makes him a perfect Freud... along with the fact you sense he is Hiding Secrets. It's a showy role and extremely good work.

Production on the film was very difficult. The budget blew out, Huston and Clift did not have an easy collaboration. The resulting film isn't a classic but is absolutely worth watching.

Book review - "Five Came Back" by Mark Harris

 Excellent look at the war career of top directors. A lot I was already familiar with but some stuff was fresh. The filmmakers spent a lot of time on these documentaries. They are lively characters - George Stevens whose life was changed, party boy John Huston, angsty Frank Capra, driven William Wyler. Entertaining.

Book review - "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison" by Christina Lane

It's tricky to write biographies of movie producers because it's so hard (at times) to ascertain what their contribution was (not that it's not considerable... it's just hard to tell) . but the author here does a great job.

Joan Harrison is  a name quite well known to serious students of Hitchcock though her reputation is very much in his shadow. She joined his team in the mid 30s, and along with Alma was a crucial part of his development - Hitch only really became Hitch after he met Harrison. She helped make his great late 30s masterpieces which led to his American career; she worked on his early American masterpieces then went her own way, becoming a producer. She started off strong with some quasi classics - Phantom Lady, Nocturne, Dark Water  - before tailing off a little with some Robert Montgomery films. She reunited with Hitch for his TV series.

This book does an excellent job sketching Harrison's personality and artistic style - intelligence, taste, love of independence, sexually liberated (affairs with Clark Gable, John Huston and probably Billy Wilder, marriage to Eric Ambler, possible flings with women), sympathetic to progressive causes, stylish. She was friends with Alec Coppel and his wife. She had ill health toward the end which is sad reading but had a pretty good life.

A worthy tribute to a genuine pioneer.

Book review - "Watch Me: A Memoir" by Anjelica Huston

 Volume two is also entertaining and well written. If Dad dominated one, Jack Nicholson is the star of two, not surprisingly. He comes across extremely well - talented, kind, generous, a bit mercurial, not very faithful but basically decent. Huston also dated Ryan O'Neal in this period - his reviews are more mixed: could be charming and decent, but also violent... he thumped Huston once.

The first part of this book was the most compelling - Hollywood in the seventies, hanging with Jack and Ryan and the others, getting caught up in the Roman Polanski case (she's quite generous to Polanski), doing modelling shoots, occasionally seeing dad.

The book becomes less interesting, surprisingly, once Huston becomes an actor. The narrative is more "this happened and that happened" and her later partners are less interesting. I totally had no idea she directed. It's all well written though. She's had a wonderful career and charmed life but talks a lot about the people she's lost in the latter portion of the book.

Movie review - "Casino Royale" (1967) **

 It's not fun but it's like a colourful museum and every Bond fan should see it. And because there is so much happening with so many actors I like I got something out of it.

Where to start:

- Woody Allen has genuinely funny gags with the firing squad

- I liked Peter Sellars as a Bond type

- Orson Welles is a terrific Bond villain

- quite a few women have agency: Ursula Andress as Vesper, Barbara Bouchet as Miss Moneypenny, Joanna Pettet is the hero of her own segment

- Terence Cooper gets a big intro then disappears

- Deborah Kerr really really overacts

- I don't think David Niven was anything like Bond, in the books or movies

- Bouchet and Jackie Bisset should have been real Bond girls they are gorgeous

- there is a lot of genuine cleverness

- there is a lot more laziness

- it piles it on but then many 60s comedies did (The Great Race, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World)

- the music score is great - the theme and "The Look of Love"

- there's genuine emotional moments which could have (don't laugh) been more mined: Andress falling for Sellers, Pettet and dad Niven

Book review - "A Story Lately Told" by Anjelica Huston

 Huston is one of those improbable people who you can't help liking even though in many ways she was born on third base - stunning mother, father John Huston, unconventional looks which led to modelling work, a lead role in a feature for her first acting gig, growing up in Ireland with sidetrips to London and Europe and everywhere, really.

It wasn't all easy. Mum died in a car crash, dad was often not around, there were plenty of sex pests. This goes up to her moving to LA which began her relationship with Jack Nicholson. There's fascinating accounts of Huston household life and making her movie and her lover, the photographer Bob Richardson. Huston is a beautiful writer. I was hoping for more muck raking but that's me.

Book review - "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett

This will sound dim but I was struck how faithful the 1940 film adaptation was to this - the structure, dialogue, characters. It really got it - sometimes cut and pasted. And why not? The original book is good - it was silly they changed it.

This has aged well in part because Sam Spade is such a prick - no Philip Marlowe like honor for him, he mostly tracks down the killer of his partner because it's bad for business. He's cynical and full of great lines.

I do get confused by the plot of this, always have - there's lots of talk about the action of people we don't see like Flloyd Thursby and the sea captain.

But the characters we do meet are fantastic - Spade of course but also the partner's cheating wife, Gutman, Joel Cairo, Wilfred, Bridget O'Shaugnessy (who Spade makes take her clothes off for a search).

Script review - "The Man Who Would Be King" by John Huston and Gladys Hill

What a wonderful script. Divine. I've got to admit - I wasn't a big fan of the film when I first saw it. Maybe I saw it too young - it's more an adventure film for grown ups. But it's great.

Fantastic read. The characters of Peachy and Davy jump off the page - cocky, working class, braggart-ty, cunning, a little dumb, susceptible to women and booze but aware of it. It's so rare we see Imperial films with working class heroes.

The big print is great to read - witty, very much in the style of Kipling. Gladys Hill makes a major contribution. The story cribs from other Kipling apparently. Grand adventure.

The A to Z of The Other Side of the Wind

(originally written for filmink magazine)

A conventional review doesn’t seem appropriate when reviewing an Orson Welles film, particularly one that’s getting a release more than 40 years after actually being made, so Stephen Vagg thought he’d tackle it A to Z.

A is for AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, which Orson Welles was given in 1975… and used the occasion to tub-thump for money to finish The Other Side of the Wind. To be honest, that story and all it involved and what it meant for Welles (and Hollywood) is more moving than anything in Wind itself – but the film is still fascinating, provoking and a reminder of what a talented man Welles was.

B is for Bogdanovich, Peter, perhaps the most famous acolyte and chronicler of Welles, who plays a character based on himself in the film. Bogdanovich began his career as an actor, as he often takes pains to point out, and has carved out a decent part-time career for himself as a character player. His performance in Wind is not one of the film’s best, but it doesn’t matter because he’s so spectacularly well cast and brings such fascinating baggage to the role. It’s also heartbreaking to see this early ‘70s Bogdanovich be so cocky and confident on screen, and to know what hardships were facing him down the track (several flops, the murder of girlfriend Dorothy Stratten, two declarations of bankruptcy). There’s also a “young dumb blonde girlfriend of the director” character played by Cathy Lucas based on Cybill Shepherd, which understandably annoyed Bogdanvich. Shepherd herself and Bogdanovich’s ex-wife Polly Platt can be glimpsed in the film.

C is for completion, fear of, something which (some) amateur psychologists think Welles suffered from – pointing to all the unfinished films he made in his life along with Wind (Don Quixote, The Dreamers, The Deep, Filming the Trial, It’s All True). Defenders argue Welles would’ve loved to have finished those films if he’d had the money and support – indeed, some get very touchy at any suggestion otherwise. Personally, I think it’s possible to reconcile both the view that he was let down by other people and he contributed to the problem. To me it makes total sense that Welles might put his heart and soul into a film and then get cold feet towards the end, when energy runs low, funds run out, and you fear the finished project isn’t going to be as good as you hoped. And I get the feeling he knew that had Wind been released in his lifetime there’d be a bunch of reviews that would say “another disappointment from the maker of Citizen Kane”… as they did for F For Fake and Chimes of Midnight and for everything else since Citizen Kane. It doesn’t make the fact that he didn’t make more completed movies any less tragic.

D is for The Deep, another unfinished film of Welles’, this one made in the late ‘60s. It was based on the novel which was filmed by Phil Noyce as Dead Calm, and I hope someone like Netflix puts that together too. I have a feeling that with its thriller plot it might be more accessible to non film buffs than Other Side of the Wind.

E is for editing, done by Welles and (after Welles died) Bob Murawski. Murawski did a stunning job of approximating Welles’ style – he imitated the great innovator with supreme skill, and if anyone deserves an Oscar from this film apart from Welles and Gary Graver it’s him.

F is for Ford, John, who I’d argue had as much, if not more, influence on the character of Jake Hannaford than any other figure, including Welles and Ernest Hemmingway. Like Ford, Hannaford was self-consciously macho, Irish, had a clan who would hang around him, had Peter Bogdanovich as an acolyte, John Milius as another acolyte (he inspired the Jack Simon character played by Gregory Sierra) and was possibly gay (read Maureen O’Hara’s memoirs for the dish on that).Of course, there’s a lot of Welles in Hannaford but I would say there’s more Ford.

G is for Gary Graver, the DOP of Wind, and Welles’ right hand man for the last fifteen years of the latter’s life. Their relationship was fascinating and complex – Welles was a father figure and inspiration to Graver, though the relationship was possibly abusive (Graver was rarely paid and at Welles’ beck and call). It’s rich emotional material, more interesting than any of the relationships depicted in Wind, to be brutally honest. It has to be said Graver does a brilliant job of photography on Wind, and one hopes he gets an Oscar nomination.

H is for homosexuality, a theme which interested Welles later his career – such as in his film script for The Big Brass Ring, and The Other Side of the Wind, which hints that Jake Hannaford has a crush on his leading man. Mind you, there’s a lot of straight sex in it, too. A lot. Hey, it was the seventies.

I is for Iran, the country of the film’s co-financier Mehdi Bushehri, the brother-in-law of the Shah. When the Shah was overthrown in 1979, the legal situation of the film became extremely tricky and contributed to its delay in being released. Which is classic Orson Welles – his productions didn’t just have financial troubles, they had troubles that involved revolutions.

J is for John Huston, who plays Hannaford – rather surprisingly since Welles normally nabbed the best roles in all his own productions. Huston’s performance is fine, but you can’t help wishing that Welles had taken the role – he had more of a twinkle in his eye, more humour, more fun. And of course, the scenes with Bogdanovich would have taken on an extra dimension. I do love how Welles and Huston were BFFs in real life though.

K is for Karp, Josh, whose superb book on the making of the film is required reading for anyone interested in it.

L is for legal troubles, which dogged this film even more than other Orson Welles productions. I think any creative person would have adored the chance of working with Orson Welles. I think any lawyer would have been terrified.

M is for McBride, Joseph, a noted film historian, biographer, screenwriter, author and educator, who appears as a character based on himself, and wrote one of the best books on Welles, Whatever Happened to Orson Welles, which did so much to revive appreciation in the considerable achievements of Welles’ later years.

N is for Netflix, famed for their market dominance, the high quality TV shows, and the patchy quality of their movies. The restoration of Wind is one of the best things that the company has ever done, the best “original” movie they’ve ever released, and they should be proud of it.

O is for Oja Kodar, who co-wrote and appears in the film, and was Welles’ creative and romantic partner during the latter years of his life, even while he was married to (and lived with) another woman. You old hound dog, Orson! Kodar spends a lot of Wind’s running time walking around nude – I mean a lot – and is front and centre in what is already the film’s most famous sequence, riding cowgirl on Bob Random in the front seat of a car while her necklace beads slapp against her body and rain splatters outside. Welles’ admiration for Kodar’s body clearly didn’t extend to wanting to hear her talk – she doesn’t say a line in the entire film. She was apparently a leading reason in holding up the release of this film, which is a shame, since she is an arresting presence.

P is for pornography, which Gary Graver used to make to pay the bills while working free for Orson Welles. Orson even famously helped him out once, editing a shower scene in a porno called 3AM. Wind is easily Welles’ most sexy film, with plenty of nudity and copulation and even a dildo in the opening scene. I always thought Welles was a great lost maker of horror films (just look at how creepy the Xanadu scenes were in Citizen Kane) or action flicks (see the house of mirrors shoot out in Lady from Shanghai, or the battle sequences in Chimes at Midnight). After watching Other Side of the Wind, I’m convinced he would have made first rate porn and erotic thrillers too.

Q is for Q and As, which appear a lot in Wind – scenes of people standing around asking questions and replying. Did this happen to Welles in real life? Does it happen in real life? It felt weird to me watching the film but maybe this was how things were in the seventies and/or among famous directors.

R is for Rich Little, a celebrity impressionist originally cast in the role later played by Peter Bogdanovich. Little shot most of his part but then walked out on the film because he had a professional engagement. Welles promptly recast the role and no doubt stewed on the betrayal – which a lot of selfish self-centred people do, which Welles clearly was, despite all his genius.

S is for Susan Strasberg, daughter of Lee and Paula, a one-time wunderkind of Broadway whose career had become reduced to mostly appearing in guest shots on TV dramas when she got the call to appear in Wind. She plays – quite well – a figure based on Pauline Kael, who famously both defended and criticised Welles in print. Welles clearly remembered the latter – her essay Raising Kane – more than the former. The finale of Wind involves Hannaford punching this character in the face for suggesting he might be gay.

T is for They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, a stunning documentary about the making of Other Side of the Wind, focusing in particular on Welles and his relationships with Bogdanovich, Kodar and Graver. It’s gripping, moving and captivating – a more emotionally affecting movie than Wind itself, though Wind is more innovative technically.

U is for Unknown Actors, which Welles delighted in using in his projects over the years. Sometimes it paid off – but there are some performances in Wind which are simply bad, such as Geoffrey Land as the Robert Evans style studio head, and Cathy Lucas as a Cybil Shepherd type. Gregory Sierra, a good actor, is disastrously miscast as a character that’s meant to be based on John Milius.

V is for vision, Orson Welles’, which is all over this film. A visual feast, full of ideas, erratic, overwhelming, stimulating. I know this is a flawed movie and I’ve been critical in this take, but I should also add it’s full of moments and scenes that have stayed with me, and I’ve seen it three times in a month, and each time gotten new stuff out of it. To counter balance that…

W is for writing, a skill at which Welles was never that good at, at least not compared to his abilities as an actor and director. If he had the help of a skilled collaborator like Herman Mankiewicz (as on Citizen Kane) or was adapting William Shakespeare, he was great, but he struggled more when writing on his own or with Kodar (eg The Big Brass Ring, Mr Arkadin). Wind has a great set up – a party in the last 24 hours of a director’s life – and plenty of ideas for drama: he’s gone bankrupt, his girlfriend is young enough to be his granddaughter, his leading man has quit, he might be in love with his leading man, he has to borrow money off his former protege. But none of these are really developed – the film is more interested in style and philosophical chat. There’s no confrontation with the girlfriend, or the leading man. No real resolutions, except death. And Welles fans will leap to his defence and go “oh that’s the way he intended, he’s subverting the form”. And I’m sure he intended to. But I’d also argue, looking at the whole of his career, that he simply wasn’t a very good screenwriter, and that’s reflected in Wind. And I also think it’s possible to say that, and say that the film is still fascinating and entertaining and well directed.

X is for X rated, which this film flirts with being at times. A dildo in the opening scene! (see pornography)

Y is for young Hollywood vs old Hollywood, which this film exemplifies. Hannaford is, like Welles and John Ford, very much a creature of old Hollywood, surrounded by cronies (played by old pros like Norman Lloyd, Mercedes McCambridge, Cameron Mitchell, Lili Palmer and Edmond O’Brien)… but who was so talented and such a maverick that he was immensely appealing to young Hollywood, as shown in the film (and in real life) by people like Bogdanovich, McBride and Jaglom.

Z is for Zabriskie Point, the 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni film which featured a house that is used in Other Side of the Wind. Welles mocks Antonioni’s film-within-a-film in Wind – lots of arty shots of Oja Kodar walking around naked not saying anything. Welles fans claim this is brilliant satire, which it is, but there’s so much of it. Kodar walks around not saying anything in the “real” section of the film, that you wonder how much he was sending it up, and how much he was simply having fun doing it himself.

Thoughts on Susan Strasberg

Watching Susan Strasberg in The Other Side of the Wind made me waste/spend an hour or so googling her and her career. I always liked her because of her good work in Taste of Fear (1961), The High Bright Sun (1965) and Psych Out (1968) where she specialised in the role of Woman Who Gets Scared By Things (mean step mothers, Cyprus terrorists, hippies).

The daughter of Lee Strasberg, she started her career with a real bang - she is great as Kim Novak's sister in Picnic (1955) and became a Broadway sensation before she was 20 playing the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank. It was thought she was going to be this incredible star but after she was in Stage Struck (1958), a remake of the Katherine Hepburn film Morning Glory, everyone seemed to decide she was crap and she didn't help by doing things like run off to Italy and believe Richard Burton when he said he'd leave his wife for her. 

As she later admitted she also didn't try as hard as she could in part because she was afraid of not living up to the family name. She kept working for most of her life as an actor and later wrote some memoirs. It's a shame she didn't make more better quality stuff but she had an interesting life. And (SPOILERS) no one seems to comment how the climax of Other Side of the Wind involves the John Huston character punching her character in the face for suggesting he might be gay.

Movie review - "The Other Side of the Wind" (2018) ****

I saw this twice, on Netflix and in the cinema, to get my film buff points. Random thoughts:
* big screen better than small because there's so much detail and visual/sound stuff to take in that you can appreciate it better on the big screen but...
* on both big and small screens the story problems remain
* the central idea is rich with drama - the last day (or night, really) of a director's life... he's fighting with the head of the studio, he's going bankrupt, his former acolyte is now far more successful than he is and he needs to borrow money off the guy, he's got a girlfriend young enough to be his granddaughter, he's got a bunch of cronies, his leading man has quit the film he's making and the director may be in love with him - all fantastic stuff but...
* Welles was never as good a writer as he was a director - he was okay if he had help from say Shakespeare or Herman Mankiewicz or Booth Tarkington or the life of William Randolph Hearst... but either on his own or with Oja Kodar he struggled... plenty of good ideas and moment but he/they struggled to shape scenes and exploit the drama. Opportunities are missed wholesale - the character of Jake Hannaford's girlfriend is thrown away, the male lead never comes to the party except at the end and he just stands there and it's not resolved or developed in any way. And Welles fans will probably argue "oh he's subverting expectations" but I think it was just beyond his abilities as a writer, and would point to the similarly flawed script for The Big Brass Ring to back this up
* the character of Hannaford is clearly autobiographical but there was also a hell of a lot of John Ford in it, perhaps more than Welles - the group of cronies, the Irish history, the hard drinking, the fact one of his acolytes was a filmmaker as well who seems to have been inspired by John Milius, the fact Bogdanovich wrote books on Ford as well, the guns
* no critic seems to be commenting the climax includes a moment where Hannaford punches a female critic for suggesting he's gay
* interesting to see Susan Strasberg, whose career so did not live up to its early promise, pop up as the Kael type figure - she's not too bad, though I admit I would have loved to have seen Polly Platt doing it (she was originally cast)
* fascinating to see Peter Bogdanovich, so cocky at that stage in his career, doing his annoying impressions, with a handsome yet slightly pudgy face, his acting not really up to the role but it's compensated for the fact he's playing himself and so much of it is based on their relationship - the fact he was a critic turned filmmaker, his very quick success, the deal he has with a Robert Evans type head of studio (similar to the one the Directors Company had at Paramount)
* Cybil Shepherd can be glimpsed super briefly - there's also super quick appearances from people like Curtis Harrington, Henry Jaglom and Dennis Hopper and apparently Cameron Crowe is there too - and Les Moonves!
* I get the film within a film is meant to be a spoof on Antonioni but Welles spends an awful lot of time on it - I mean we see a lot of this film, way after its satirical point has been made, and get the impression it was also there to show off his girlfriend's hot body (she walks around nude a LOT) -also the opening boobs and bums in the sauna seem really not needed
* the blankness of the actors in the film within in a film makes sense but it makes no sense, to me at any rate, that the actor characters played by Kodar and Bob Random, are similar dull blank slates - I think this is a major problem with the film especially as a crucial plot is that Random has betrayed Hannaford by leaving the film, but he's given no character, nothing... and I get the feeling Welles realised these actors simply weren't up to it... I could be wrong, but I don't think I am because...
* there's a fair few actors in the film who aren't up to it - some get away with it because they're cast so beautifully, eg Bogdanovich and Joseph McBride - but Geoffrey Land, the guy who plays the head of the studio isn't up to it (I wish they'd cast someone like Edmond O'Brien or Cameron Mitchell who are in the film but feel under-used... but I guess they were too old and Welles wanted to have someone do Robert Evans, not that the exec is presented unreasonably... Hannafort doesn't attend the screening) - neither is Cathy Lucas who plays the girlfriend
* the old dudes and dudettes like Norman Crane, and Mercedes McCambridge and Lili Palmer are magnificent (though you can sense Palmer was meant to be Marlene Dietrich)
* I love that there was a rival acolyte for Hannaford based on John Milius but Gregory Sierra is super miscast - too skinny and not faux-macho enough
*Technically its stunning - the editors and team at Netflix did a marvellous job - it has a magic about it - I did start to zone out around the two thirds mark
* parts of it felt weird, the people standing around having philosophical chats in front of a big crowd and going off to the drive in at the end.
Had this come out I feel it would've flopped - the story isn't up to it. But I'm so glad it was finally released and I hope Welles, Gary Graver and the editor get Oscar noms.

Movie review - "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead" (2018) *****

Superb documentary - everything you need about The Other Side of the Wind and more. It's less innovative than that film but more emotionally affective, as the material is better - the highs and lows of Welles' last years, his difficulties raising money for projects, his relationship with Bogdanovich (who was his student, then outstripped him, then fell back in the pack - and Welles hurt Bogdanovich mocking Cybill Shepherd and making jokes about At Long Last Love with Burt Reynolds on a talk show), his relationship with Gary Graver (who was so devoted, hoped that Wells would turn his career around and it didn't).

Fantastic footage including outtakes starring Rich Little, behind the scenes stuff, Welles doing a Q and A before the film about the film, the porn clip from 3AM which Welles edited for Graver. No Oja Kodar but it doesn't matter.

A truly fantastic doco.