Orson Welles’s last film makes its debut 33 years after his death

Orson Welles was on the line. “What are you doing Thursday?” he asked.

nnaford’s unfinished comeback film — screened at the party — are interspersed. John Huston, who died in 1987, plays Hannaford as a misogynistic, safari-suit-wearing alcoholic. Bogdanovich stars as Brooks Otterlake, a young director coming into wealth and prominence. Oja Kodar, who co-wrote the screenplay with Welles, acts in the bizarre film-within-the-film.

The result is a politically incorrect fever dream that involves dwarf sidekicks, Kodar in “redface” as a Native American woman, at least one orgy, a drive-in theatre, ‘70s-era views of women (disposable) and inclusion (non-existent), the mutilation of a doll, a car crash, mannequins, an ice cube, lanterns, rifles and a giant phallus built with chicken wire and perched on a sand dune, among other imagery.

“It will be interesting to see how ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ is received,” Ray Kelly, who runs the site Wellesnet.com, said in an email as he monitored online reaction following the Telluride screening from his home in Massachusetts. “Many of Welles’ finest works, including ‘Touch of Evil’ and ‘Chimes at Midnight,’ had their detractors when they were released. It took years before they were fully appreciated.”

The Telluride premiere was attended by a wide range of people — a 21-year-old college student, Jack Dorfman, who described himself as a Bogdanovich nut; John Bailey, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Brad Bird, the animation whiz behind “Incredibles 2.” Before the lights went down, the mood was upbeat, with people praising Netflix for coming to the financial rescue and Marshall, balancing himself with a cane, greeting friends in the aisles.

“I have been looking forward to seeing this film since I was 12 years old,” said Randy Haberkamp, 61, the academy’s managing director of preservation and foundation programs. Haberkamp said that, as a boy in Ohio, he had seen a CBS special on Welles that mentioned “The Other Side of the Wind.” “I remember thinking, ‘I cannot wait until it comes out,'” he said.

Afterward, however, the atmosphere was notably sombre. Marshall, who was the film’s original production manager, and Bogdanovich returned to the stage, along with the film scholar Joseph McBride, who appears in “The Other Side of the Wind” as a gauche young critic. For a minute, it seemed as if emptiness had suddenly hit them: Now what? Their 48-year battle to get the film finished and seen was over.

“It is sort of bittersweet,” Marshall said.

“It is a sad movie, I think,” Bogdanovich said haltingly. “Not only Orson’s last movie. But it is sort of like the end of everything. It comes across to me like the end of the world.”

McBride took issue with some of the early reviews, which he felt gave Huston and other leading cast members short shrift. “If there was any justice in the world, there would be a lot of Oscars for this film,” McBride said.