A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making (2018) Reviews

• I am not sold

  Horst_In_Translation2018-12-09

  The title "A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making" is pretty telling here as this Netflix documentary from 2018 depicts the process of how Orson Welles' final film was recently restored by several people who had the intention to make the outcome as convincing as possible. And while watching this process was not too uninteresting, I am really not sold here. If Welles could watch the film, would he accept it as one of his own? I am having severe doubts, even if the presence of the likes of Oscar nominee Peter Bogdanovich surely helps the matter and there are some established filmmakers in here you could say. At under 40 minutes it is not a long watch by any means and the director is Ryan Suffern, who worked on many other films about films. This one here could be the work that makes the biggest splash and an oscar nomination may not be entirely out of the picture. So yeah, if you care about the technical movie making process and about Orson Welles, then maybe give this one a go. I must say I am not a huge fan of either, so maybe my perception here is a bit biased and subjective, even if I think that on some occasions it was very interesting to listen to the interviewees. Maybe the highlight for me was instead seeing John Huston, already at a relatively old age and I just adore his screen presence. So maybe it would be a good choice for me to check out the finished film. I guess it could be a good watch as a double feature together with this documentary as seeing a Welles movie released in 2018 is nothing really expected to be honest. All in all, I still give it a thumbs-down as it did not really feel particularly interesting and people with zero connections to making film themselves should better skip the watch here as this is not for rookies. Thumbs down.