When Orson Welles died in 1985, his beloved film project, "The Other Side of the Wind," was doomed to never be completed. But decades after a cinematic legend began, the Netflix film will finally take its global bow.
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The world's most cursed film projects
Film history is replete with disasters and unrealised masterworks that never — or sometimes barely — made it to the big screen. Often unfinished or never shown, here are 10 legendary films that were cursed from day one.
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Incomplete projects galore: Orson Welles
Orson Welles is perhaps the master of incomplete films. His classic works are actually outnumbered by projects that were never finished, the most well-known being "The Other Side of the Wind." Welles started shooting it in the early 1970s but died before it was edited. Netflix has meanwhile reconstructed the lost film, which debuts worldwide in November 2018 after a Venice Film Festival premiere.
Two decades later: 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote'
Filming on Terry Gilliam's legendary Don Quixote project started in 2000, only to be postponed and interrupted several times for various reasons. The 2002 documentary "Lost in La Mancha" showed the nightmarish setbacks of the production. Over the years, the actors and even the story changed. It finally premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. But not all cursed projects were completed...
Image: Diego Lopez Calvin/Tornasol Films/Carisco Producciones
Never shot: Kubrick's 'Napoleon'
Stanley Kubrick had extremely elaborate plans for his Napoleon Bonaparte epic, but the project failed, even though the screenplay and costumes were all ready. A dissuading factor for producers was the financial flop faced by Sergei Bondartschuk's mega production, Waterloo. Kubrick's preparations weren't entirely in vain: Some material was used in his 1975 work, "Barry Lyndon."
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Out of luck: Eisenstein's Mexico films
In the early 1930s, famous director Sergei M. Eisenstein planned but failed to shoot a work titled "Que viva Mexico!" in Hollywood. A second venture, a film about Mexican history, failed as well. The material that was actually filmed has been used in various documentaries.
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Neverending story: Marilyn Monroe's last movie
When filming started in 1962, no one knew this was going to be Marilyn Monroe's last movie. Director George Cukor's "Something's Got to Give" was star-crossed from the start because Monroe repeatedly dropped out. Lee Remick was to replace her, only to be vetoed by lead actor Dean Martin. A later documentary shows 37 minutes of the unfinished film.
Image: picture-alliance/Everett Colle/20thCentFox
Experiment with colors: 'Hell'
Iconic German actress Romy Schneider was cast to star in another famous unfinished film, Henri-Georges Clouzot's "L'Enfer" ("Hell," from 1964). The production turned into a nightmare, including because Clouzot had a heart attack. The director later used some sensational color shots of Romy Schneider in his last movie, and a documentary exploring why "Hell" was never completed came out in 2009.
Image: Kinowelt
Crying clowns: Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis' "The Day the Clown Cried" is one of the most mysterious film projects in film history, aiming to tell a story from Nazi Germany using humorous means. The American comedian directed and starred in the 1972 drama. It was completed, but never screened publicly due to legal problems and Lewis' displeasure with the outcome.
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Megalomania: Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola also worked on various projects that never progressed. Among them, he turned to "Megalopolis" in 1984, but the 200-page script about an architect and a mayor quarreling about the future of New York City was never turned into a movie.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/L. Rebours
A dream not come true: Leone's 'Leningrad'
In the 1980s, Italian director Sergio Leone, himself no stranger to epic movies (above, on set filming "Once upon a time in America"), wanted to make a film about the grueling German siege of Leningrad in World War II. The film was never realized, as the director died in 1989 at the age of 60.
Even the "master of suspense" Alfred Hitchcock couldn't realize all of his projects and ideas. In the late 1950s, he planned to film "No Bail for the Judge," starring Audrey Hepburn, a film about a judge charged with murdering a prostitute. But there were problems, the lead actress withdrew — and Hitchcock moved on to other projects.
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Since The Other Side of the Wind made its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in August, there has been great anticipation before the global release of Orson Welles' legendary film that most believed would forever remain on that long list of cursed and never-completed movie projects.
Such an end had seemed fitting since the semi-autobiographical film (though the lead character played by John Huston was said to have been more based on Ernest Hemingway than Welles), was ultimately about a director who never completes his final pet film project before he dies at the age of 70. Fifteen years after filming for The Other Side of the Wind began, Welles also died aged 70.
When Welles passed away, he had barely started on the editing due to a lack of funds (a main backer was the imprisoned brother-in-law of the Shah of Iran) and few believed they could reconstruct the hours of footage — filmed over six years between 1970-76 due to numerous interruptions — that formed a metatextual "film-within-a-film" about art and celebrity.
Lead actor John Huston, director Orson Welles and co-star Peter Bogdanovich during filming in the 1970sImage: Netflix
Not quite a Netlflix original
It was lucky, however, that Welles left detailed notes about how the film should be structured, tips that were picked up by director Peter Bogdanovich — who plays a young, commercially successful director in the film — and a team of devoted filmmakers and producers who edited and completed the film. It all became possible after Netflix acquired the rights and financed the reconstruction of Welles' forgotten last feature film.
In its reconstructed form, the movie has garnered much critical praise ahead of its Netflix debut. The New Yorker said Orson Welles' last movie, which came nearly two decades after his previous studio-backed production, A Touch of Evil (1958), vindicated the filmmaker's genius after he fell out with Hollywood. The cinema pioneer who changed film forever with Citizen Kane, was finally back in business.
Marlene Dietrich starred in Orson Welles' 1958 classic, "A Touch of Evil," the last of his films to get major studio investment Image: picture-alliance/United Archives/IFTN
"The Other Side of the Wind is a settling of scores—with Hollywood, with the times, and, above all, with himself," wrote The New Yorker. "It is a belated work of his colossal artistry, and one of the great last dramatic features by any director."
From today, audiences around the world will finally get the chance to see what was once one of the great unfinished film projects — a title also given to Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which also finally came to fruition in 2018 and is included in our gallery of cursed film projects above.
