Stop. Watch. Listen

Orson Welles's 'lost' epic finally hits screens - 33 years after his death

The famed director's final masterpiece, 'The Other Side of the Wind', and 'They'll Love Me When I'm Dead', a documetary about the making of it, are now available on Netflix

11 November 2018 - 00:00 By tymon smith

AT A GLANCE:
WHAT AND WHO: The Other Side of the Wind, which director Orson Welles called his masterpiece, and They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, a documetary about the making of it.
WHY: It's a part of film history.
WHERE: Netflix.
FULL REVIEW:
In the history of American movies, there is no greater and perhaps no more tragic figure than the oversized, food- and drink-loving bon vivant force that was Orson Welles.
At age 23 he scared the US to death with his mockumentary radio production of HG Wells's novel War of the Worlds, causing widespread panic among listeners who believed themselves to be in the midst of an alien invasion.
Three years later Welles changed the course of cinema history together with cinematographer Gregg Toland with Citizen Kane, a technically innovative and dramatically gripping tale of the hubris of media magnate Charles Foster Kane (loosely based on real-life media baron William Randolph Hearst, who many believed responsible for destroying the young director's subsequent career).
It is still consistently ranked as the greatest film ever made, and gained Welles a notorious reputation from which he was unable to escape for most of the remainder of his life.
While Welles went on to direct several, mostly posthumously, acclaimed films - including The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, The Trial and F for Fake - he was never really reconciled with Hollywood, and so his career was characterised by methods associated with the indie filmmaker movement of the 1990s.
Welles spent much of his time in Europe, raising funds for the piecemeal completion of his many projects, calling in favours from famous friends, shooting what he could when he was able and receiving critical acclaim but little financial reward.
The list of unfinished Welles projects is legend among cinephiles and includes his original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons and his adaptation of Cervantes's classic novel Don Quixote.
But perhaps the most personal of these is his magnum opus, The Other Side of the Wind.
WATCH | The trailer for The Other Side of the Wind..

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