ORSON WELLES'S DON QUIXOTE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Status: OR
ORSON WELLES' DON QUIXOTE
Starring: Francisco Reiguera, Akim Tamiroff, Orson Welles.
Director (original footage): Orson Welles.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
On and off for seventeen years, Orson Welles, worked on an adaptation of Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE. While he worked on other projects, he would shoot pieces of DON QUIXOTE here and there, in the hope that some day he would have the financing necessary to complete the project. However, the film was not complete when Welles died in 1985. In 1992, a Spanish team undertook the project of turning the existing footage into a completed film. They have done Welles' memory a tremendous disservice in the process. DON QUIXOTE is a monumental disappointment, with only glimpses of Welles' brilliance emerging from an exercise in editing butchery.
Welles' DON QUIXOTE opens with the familiar story of the Spanish nobleman (Francisco Reiguera) who becomes fascinated with the tales of chivalry he reads about in novels. He decides that he is to become a knight errant himself, and, accompanied by his squire Sancho Panza (Akim Tamiroff), sets off to do great deeds in the name of his idealized love Dulcinea. Soon, however, Don Quixote comes into conflict not only with sheep and windmills, but with the modern world. Sancho runs with the bulls in Pamplona, discovers television, and even finds himself being captured on film by the great director Orson Welles.
This collision of eras is the heart of Welles' vision for DON QUIXOTE, and to the extent that it survives the film is thought- provoking. It becomes an instant validation of Quixote's belief that through his exploits as a knight errant, he might achieve some measure of immortality. And we see that this is what has occurred; Welles skillfully frames shots that include a billboard for "Don Quixote Cerveza" and the Restaurante Don Qixote, emphasizing the character's nature as an icon. He is not an object of ridicule, but a dreamer to be respected for being true to his vision. As Welles places himself in the narrative, we also see how he identifies with the knight, and considers his own immortality through his filmmaking.
Unfortunately, DON QUIXOTE takes nearly an hour to get to its contemporary setting, and that hour occasionally borders on the unwatchable. It is not simply that the quality of the print is sometimes horrible. There is simply no rhythm to the story, and it feels for all the world like pieces of film stuck together at random. As striking as some of Welles' images are, editing director Jess Franco simply had no idea what to do with them, and apparently even changed some of the editing Welles *had* managed to complete before his death.
Another huge problem with the film involves the dialogue dubbing. Although two other actors portray Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, their parts were filmed silent, with Welles himself to dub both voices. However, only portions of Welles' dialogue were recorded, and where his dialogue doesn't exist, two other actors were used to provide the voices. Not only is the shift between Welles' voice and that of two other men jarring, but the two other actors do not even come close to the spirit of the vocal performances Welles was providing. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are not even the same characters from one scene to the next, and at times the appalling modern voiceovers are simply laughable.
The version of DON QUIXOTE which screened at San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival is not the same as the one which made its American premiere at the Museum of Modern Art. Oja Kodar, Welles' companion during the last years of his life, and frequent Welles cinematographer Gary Graber trimmed a 113-minute version to just under 90 minutes, and it would be an easy knock at the film to say that any changes which made it shorter still would be a further improvement. But there's really no way of knowing, and that's the real point. Using guesswork and very little talent, a bunch of well-intentioned film buffs tried to piece together a lot of raw footage into something resembling the work of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. They failed.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 knights errant: 3.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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