Orson Welles’s movie “The Other Side of the Wind” is considered to be a cinematic enigma although it was released after his death. It is believed to be a film that challenges viewers with its editing style that is unique and fragmented and it also moves away from the traditional narrative structures. The Other Side of The Wind is a testament to the visionary genius of Orson Welles. It uses innovative techniques which makes storytelling creative. Gary Graver, who was a dear friend of Orsen Welles, worked on this movie’s cinematography and did an amazing job. Although the movie was edited by Orson himself, later when the movie was released the final cut had almost half of the editing done by Bob Murawski who did justice to the work of Orson. The complexities of editing that are found in this movie will be explored in this paper in detail. We will look into Welles’s avant-garde sensibilities and how this film had a long lasting effect on the audience and as well as the artists because of its unconventional editing techniques.
The Disordered Narrative
This movie had a particularly disordered narrative that makes it unique and it was purposeful. Welles always liked to experiment with storytelling and in this case he took the route of nonlinear storytelling. Although it was nonlinear, still there was structure to the film. When a director uses nonlinear storytelling, it allows them to explore the limits of human perception and memory and their fragmented nature. The Other Side of The Wind had multiple narratives and timelines weaved together which created a unique perspective for the viewers. His characters had inner worlds that were filled with chaos and only with the help of narrative tapestry was he able to mirror their chaotic nature and convince the audience.
Orson Welles’ film “The Other Side of the Wind” had a very challenging and uncertain editing process due to his unconventional approach and the incomplete state of the movie. Bob Murawski who edited the movie stated in an interview that he had made the assumption from some of the interviews that Welles had given that much of the movie was already edited. But when he checked the footage he saw that the movie was half edited and the other half was still in the form of simple footage. The team faced a large amount of long assembly footage with repeated takes, making the editing task complex and much of the film remained unedited (Wellesnet, 2021). The lack of original production sound added to the challenges as most of the tapes were lost, and because of this the picture came out as full of splices and rough work. Bob and his team employed creative solutions to overcome these hurdles, which included using alternate takes and ADR. Despite the technical difficulties, the team worked hard and was able to bring Welles’ vision to life.
Editing techniques are always used to induce emotions and control the perspectives of the audience. Welles portrayed disorientation and chaos in the film by using rapid cuts between different scenes and juxtaposition of images. It comes under a style of editing which is frantic in nature, where the confusion and disorientation of the characters is shown to the audience by using this unique style of editing. Welles, who was compared with Stanley Kubrick because of his directing and editing style, was very different from the other directors who liked their audience to know where the movie was going. He uses images and sound to tell a story and not often have to use dialogue to continue the story. In the bar scene which is the first long scene of the film within film we see Oja Kodar who is playing The Actress and John Dale the male lead which is played by Robert Random watching each other without saying a word. In the whole sequence we shift from actors to the environment and there is a song playing in the background. Although we do not hear anything we are still able to take in a lot of emotions between the actors in this scene. This use of imagery is something that people have admired in Hitchcock, Stanley and Welles’s work (Boston Review, 2022). His work confuses people and sometimes outrages them because it is not easily grasped or understood. But most of the time after 5 to 10 years of their work, they are considered classics, and that is exactly what happened with The Other Side of The Wind (McBride, 2018).
A dramatic imagination is displayed by Orson Welles in “The Other Side of the Wind,”. You can see that in an early sequence where they show the team taking a trip where they travel from the studio on a public bus, a private bus, then on a car and a motorcycle. It is evident that if that sequence was completed by any other filmmaker, it would have gone to waste. In that extended sequence when they reach the ranch for Jake Hannafords after-work birthday party we see how that dramatic imagination unfolds. In that party we see the idiosyncrasies of the characters and we see what the dynamic of their relationships and their perspectives are. In this party we see a tension starting to build which is heightened because it is compressed in the parameter of the party. We see resonant clashes between the old Hollywood filmmakers and creatives who are from the era of Jake Hannaford and the new generation which is taking over their place and is full of graspers and strivers.
Dynamic Editing Techniques
Welles embraces the use of psychological turmoil and frantic energy in the movie. And to portray this he uses rapid pacing, montages and jump cuts. A feeling of urgency and unease is created by these techniques which help draw the audience deeper into the real narrative of the movie. Welles knew the impact this would create by making the audience understand the multiple layers of the story and being invested in it. The audience starts understanding the emotions of the characters. The ebb and flow of the audio experience exposes the viewer to the many lines of power, memory, pain, conflict and desire that run through the film and bind the characters together in a bittersweet way (Brody, 2018).
The brilliance of Bob Murawsaki could not be ignored when talking about the editing choices of the movie. Although the first 42 minutes of the movie was edited when Welles was alive and he worked on the 96 hours of footage. Murawski shares editing credits with Welles and he worked tirelessly and inventively to do justice to the film. The movie is extraordinarily complex and it gives us a polyphonic audiovisual experience. He also made the film-within-film in a manner that it feels like a primary mood of experience and it also runs parallel to the movie. There is sharp turning of the scenes and sometimes it cuts to someone who is making an ear-catching remark or at someone who is going to make one.
Welles has used cinematography techniques in this movie which you cannot compare to the Hollywood of the new era. It has a distinct pace and a cinematographic style that is a presentation of that old era of Hollywood. You can clearly see the difference if you see the motorcycle moving shots in the film of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) and The Other Side of the Wind. The creative freedom that Welles employed in this movie is also important to praise because at the time of the filming there were problems with the production. He did not had a lot of funds to demand that type of dedication and commitment from his creative team. There was a frustration that Welles and the new Hollywood shared and that was battling the old studios for creative control of the movies. Welles had a more classical style though which was different from the social realism portrayed the in the films made by new Hollywood. He was also ambivalent from the new Hollywood in his approach to aim for visual spectacle and grand narratives.
Film-Within-Film
Welles uses film-within-film style of directing and editing where we see that the main film is a cinema verité documentary and within it we saw a film being played and both of these combined creates the masterpiece that is The Other Side of The Wind. There is a huge difference that you can see when the film shifts from the documentary frames to the art firm frames and that creates a metaleptic tension. They are using two sizes of frames which are super 8mm to 16mm to 35mm. This creates a sense of us going through the making of a film and Welles guides us through the journey of the origin of cinema. To show the barron nature of John Hannaford’s (John Huston) creativity, there is the use of heavy handed adult content in the movie and amature camera tricks. In the documentary style section Welles shows us the interpersonal conflicts on the set, the quicksilver of finance, the travails of publicity and also the presence of psychopaths and sociopaths on the set of a movie and all of this is meant to display the difficulties one faces while making a movie (Gabriel, 2023).
We also see a glimpse of the new generation of Hollywood in a wide rage of characters in this movie. There is Joseph McBride who is portrayed as a scholarly pest. We have Gregory Sierra who is a clever dictatorial rival of Brooks. It is also evident if we see the lead actor and actress of the movie. The unnamed actress is played by Oja Kodar who also helped Welles write the movie and the actor John Dale (Robert Random). We don’t get to really know that character and we do not know if she is a Native American playing herself or not. She also does not speak in the movie or at the party. She is fashioning her success while also enduring insults that are made towards her throughout the film-within-film (Brody, 2018).
In conclusion the brilliance and commitment of Orson Welles is evident and crystal clear because of him pushing the boundaries of filmmaking in “The Other Side of the Wind”. Whether it is the disoriented nature of the editing or the fragmented narrative of the movie the audience is able to take interest in the movie and also tries to decipher the layered meaning of the movie. The work Welles did in collaboration with Bob Murawski who was his favourite editor was groundbreaking and it has inspired a lot of filmmakers of this era. The idea of making this movie in a film-within-film style was also a creative choice which made it more attractive and complex, and it also let the audience know about the making of the movie. With “The Other Side of the Wind,” Welles had a long lasting impact on the cinematic world because of his groundbreaking vision.
References
Brody, R. (2018, November 2). “The Other Side of the Wind,” reviewed: A belated Orson Welles masterpiece. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-other-side-of-the-wind-reviewed-a-belated-orson-welles-masterpiece
Boston Review. (2022, November 14). The Obsessions of Hitchcock, Welles, and Kubrick – Boston review. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-kirshner-hitchcock/
Gabriel, R. (2023). Impossible Autofiction : The Other Side of the Wind and Orson Welles. Fabula / the Conferences. https://doi.org/10.58282/colloques.11124
Karp Josh, Orson Welles’s Last movie : The Making of The Other Side of the Wind, New
York, St. Martin’s Press, 2015.
McBride, J. (2018). Twilight in the smog: notes on the other side of the wind. Sight and Sound, 28(11), 32–37. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=6794409Wellesnet. (2021, November 6). Bob Murawski details the editing of ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ Wellesnet. https://www.wellesnet.com/bob-murawski-editing-other-side-wind/