So in 1970, Orson Welles came back to Hollywood, and was going to make a movie called The Other Side of the Wind, but despite filming it on and off for six years, it was never finished, until posthumously, someone took the hundreds of hours of raw footage and the original script, and tried to edit it into a final product.

So the story of The Other Side of the Wind is that a director is making a last movie, called The Other Side of the Wind, but it’s not finished and is running out of money and its leading man took off, so he throws a Hollywood party where he’s going to try to raise some more funds, but also half the people at that party have cameras, so they film the party.

The film proper is like 70% the party stuff, and 30% the film within the film.

Which is too bad. The film within the film is a cheeky sendup of ’70s movie tropes. It’s all full of saturated colors, quick cuts, obtrusive music, nudity all over the place, and two figures chasing each other through barren empty landscapes. It’s clearly a satire (as well as maybe Welles expressing the idea that he’s not the guy to direct movies in that then-contemporary style), but it’s not bad.

The party scenery, though, is… well, it feels like it was edited together after the fact. It’s a bit shaggy and sloppy. But it is telling at least a fraction of a story — about his leading man, and how the way they met him originally (saving him from drowning) was a stunt, and the kid really just wanted to always meet the director. Which feels like more of a betrayal after the kid walked off your movie, so yeah.

I don’t think this film is super-essential, but if you’ve seen some other Orson Welles movies, it’s an interesting bookend on his career.