CPH:DOX 2021: HOPPER/WELLES: A Clash Of Film Titans

CPH:DOX 2021: HOPPER/WELLES: A Clash Of Film Titans

Chewing the fat, a chicken dinner and putting filmmaking, contemporary politics, and personal backgrounds to rights, Hopper/Welles sees two of movie history’s true greats go toe-to-toe for two hours of meandering, boozy debate. In 1970, still high on the wave of Easy Rider’s ground-breaking success, Dennis Hopper left his troubled follow-up, The Last Movie, mid-shoot to join Orson Welles on the set of his own ill-fated project, The Other Side of the Wind.  

The rediscovered footage of their protracted, rambling conversation, is a little bloated and no doubt overly long-winded for some. It has been reconstituted in a documentary of rare tangibility, of pure, albeit- occasionally pretentious, expression. It is bristling with keen insight, friendly confrontation, and high-minded musings on just what it all means, man. In a cramped, candle-lit, smoke-filled room, the clumsy, out of focus, crackling but woozy and intimate monochrome 16mm footage captures a meeting of the minds, and frequent butting of heads, as the old master and a young pretender fight their respective corners, at a pivotal time for American cinema and society at large.

An Ageing Welles Maintains The Upper Hand

Out of sight from multiple cameras stationed – and frequently moved in clumsy, erratic jolts – around the small, brick-walled room, and blurring the lines between performance and docu-reality, Welles assumes the name and interviewer role of John Huston’s character, Jake Hannaford, from The Other Side of the Wind. Whether taking on this persona in an effort to put Hopper at ease or simply to toy with his prey as a cat does a mouse, Welles’s booming, authoritative, disembodied voice goes easy on his interviewee, to begin with. “Fuck the audiences!” he exclaims with playful bonhomie, one director to another, as they mull knowingly over just who it is a filmmaker makes his or her movie for.  

CPH:DOX 2021 review - HOPPER/WELLES: a clash of film titans
source: Royal Road Entertainment

“If I hadn’t had an unhappy childhood, I don’t think I would have ever become a movie director. Or an actor, even.” It takes a little while to get to the heart of the matter, but having carefully laid traps, and ensured a steady supply of alcohol, Welles lures Hopper into striking declarations of personal motivation. Oedipal revelations, admissions that speak to a chequered past, and the name-dropping of inspiration and influences are a delight in which we willingly indulge. Hopper loved the simplicity of De Sica’s Umberto D, but fell asleep each of the seven times he attempted to sit through Antonioni’s L’Avventura; Welles claims not to know who Bob Dylan is, so out of touch he pretends to be with the modern scene.  

The Times They Were A Changing

And as the two men hold court, there’s the sense of a changing of the guard here. Hopper laments the complications of having to manage 25 or 30 people on set at any one time, whereas Welles recalls no less than 120 in his golden era. The times they certainly were a-changing. But was it for the better? Twelve years had passed since Welles had made Touch of Evil, and though F for Fake would follow in 1973, his career was undoubtedly on the slide. Hopper, the young gun thrust into a limelight he shunned, was heralded as a new voice in American independent cinema. A renegade, a maverick whose debut well and truly upset the apple cart. Not that Welles had ever done anything but make films very much on his own terms.  

CPH:DOX 2021 review - HOPPER/WELLES: a clash of film titans
source: Royal Road Entertainment

Enjoying a gin and tonic, and another, and then another, Hopper eases into the setting and his interrogation, which Welles navigates masterfully. In the dimly, simply lit room, a gas lamp casts half of the young director’s face into silhouette before a shift moves face-on, framing the hirsute, cowboy-hatted Hopper directly for most of the film. Even in what may feel like an extended making-of featurette, there are imperceptible technical choices that do work, however haphazard they may be. Given their lamentations of the editing process (Hopper states he had 35 hours of footage for Easy Rider for an eventual cut of 95 minutes), is there not, something more truthful, pure, and realistic in the rambling, unencumbered and unfiltered stream of consciousness that Hopper/Welles presents?  

That’s A Wrap: Hopper/Welles

Much of the film – in particular its inspection of politics and the environment – is relatable fifty years hence but the odd quip, Hopper’s roving eye, which follows young clapperboard girls a little too closely, and a distasteful anecdote really do time stamp the film. In spite of these reservations, and though it certainly demands patience, Hopper/Welles remains a treasure trove worthy of exploration. And just as Welles at one point compares movies to a hearty meal, some may find its length and labour a little hard to swallow; however, fans of these two titans of American film will find plenty to digest in a film which flows and falters in its own idiosyncratic way towards that most elusive of cinematic intentions: Truth.

Have you seen Hopper/Welles? Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments below! 

Hopper/Welles is currently playing as part of the online edition of CPH:DOX 2021.

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