Hopper/Welles

Irgendwo, in einem dunklen Zimmer, verbringen 1970 zwei Ikonen des amerikanischen Kinos zwei Stunden miteinander, um über Filme, Liebe und Revolutionen zu diskutieren. Mehr braucht es nicht für ein erstaunliches Zeitdokument. Orson Welles, der den ganzen Film über aus dem Off Fragen stellt, und Dennis Hopper, der diese trotzig beantwortet, stammen spürbar aus unterschiedlichen Generationen. Welles geht der politischen und künstlerischen Haltung von Hopper nach, scheitert aber immer wieder an dessen ausgestellter Uneindeutigkeit. Was die beiden eint, ist der unbedingte Glauben an die Möglichkeiten des persönlichen Ausdrucks im Kino. (Patrick Holzapfel)

In Anwesenheit von Filip Jan Rymsza (Produzent).

In 1970, Dennis Hopper flew to visit Orson Welles in Los Angeles from New Mexico, where he was making THE LAST MOVIE. Welles was shooting THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND and wanted Hopper to appear in a party scene and join him in conversation. Their meeting forms the material for this fascinating appendix to THE OTHER SIDE, with a Stetson-wearing Hopper and an off- camera Welles discussing film, the state of America, and Hopper’s ideals for just over two hours.
The result is hugely revealing, sometimes perplexing – with Welles for much of the time speaking as fictional director Jake Hannaford, played in THE OTHER SIDE by John Huston. An unusually restrained Welles gently – sometimes less gently – presses a relaxed Hopper for his views, and the younger man, then 34, obligingly plays the idealistic “voice of a generation”, commenting on his cinematic dreams, the state of Hollywood in 1970, and even his secret sexual desires. The film is all the more poignant given the fate of THE LAST MOVIE, which would soon leave Hopper’s career as spectacularly, indeed mythically damaged as Welles’s was in the years after his own blaze of youthful glory. (Jonathan Romney)

In the presence of Filip Jan Rymsza (producer).

Orson Welles: CITIZEN KANE (1941), THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942), IT’S ALL TRUE (1943, Ko-Regie), THE STRANGER (1946), THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947), MACBETH (1948), THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO: THE MOOR OF VENICE (1951), MR. ARKADIN (1955), TOUCH OF EVIL (1958), LE PROCÈS (1962), CAMPANADAS A MEDIANOCHE (1965), THE HEROINE (1967), VIENNA (1968, K), THE DEEP (1970), DON QUIXOTE (1972), F FOR FAKE (1973), THE DREAMERS (1982, K), MOBY DICK (2000, K), THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (2018)