By RAY KELLY
Don Quixote may sally forth again, but this time in a manner that does justice to filmmaker Orson Welles’ vision.
Materials related to the unfinished film and housed in U.S. and European archives are being catalogued in anticipation of a scholar-supported assembly and restoration. However, informed sources caution the project has yet to win the approval of Oja Kodar, the film’s rights holder. Wellesnet has reached out to Kodar, Welles’ longtime companion and partner, but not heard back.
Various European-led efforts to complete Don Quixote have stumbled over the past decade, despite the best of intentions and high caliber of participants involved. For those familiar with the decades-long struggle to finish Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, this is hardly surprising.
A key figure in one of those failed attempts told Wellesnet he was not overly optimistic about the latest venture given his own experience, but he remains hopeful that Don Quixote will one day get the completion it deserved.
Set in Spain, the film is based on Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century novel. Welles cast Francisco Reiguera in the title role as Quixote, an old man who believes he is a knight-errant. Accompanied by his faithful squire, Sancho Panza (Akim Tamiroff), the pair find themselves in conflict with modern-day people and technology. Welles appears on camera reading the story of Don Quixote to a young girl, Dulcie, played by Patty McCormack.
Welles initially conceived Don Quixote as a CBS television drama in 1955. However, it evolved into a larger, self-financed personal project that Welles would return to over the course of his life. He set no deadline to complete it. Welles described it in 1981 as “a private exercise of mine, and it will be finished as an author would finish it — in my own good time, when I feel like it.” He slyly added, “And when it is released, its title is going to be When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?”
Following his death in 1985, Don Quixote was among several other unfinished films bequeathed to Kodar. Reportedly pressed for cash and desperate to help family in war-torn Yugoslavia, Kodar sanctioned what turned out to be a disastrous assembly, Don Quijote de Orson Welles, by Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco in 1992.
Franco, who had worked as a second unit director on Chimes at Midnight, and producer Patxi Irigoyen completed their released film using footage obtained from Kodar and inexplicably added scenes Welles shot for the RAI Italian TV series La Spagna di Don Chisciotte (In the Land of Don Quixote).
The Franco film was a disjointed mess and widely jeered by Welles scholars. Critics called it a “travesty” and Welles’ youngest daughter, Beatrice, branded it a “disgrace.” I spoke briefly with Kodar immediately after a screening of Don Quijote de Orson Welles at the Museum of Modern Art in New York some 30 years ago. She was quite emotional and visibly distressed by what had played on the screen.
A major stumbling block was that Franco’s assembly was unable to utilize the 65,000 feet – or more than 12 hours – of negative then held by Mauro Bonanni, Welles’ Italian film editor. Bonanni and Juan Cobos, a close friend of Welles and his assistant on Chimes at Midnight, had concerns about Franco completing Don Quixote from the start and refused to participate. Bonanni, who had spoken with Welles months before his death about editing the footage, proposed a group of scholars from around the globe convene, compile and present a comprehensive version of Don Quixote. Bonanni died in 2022 and Cobos is 91.
The decades-long legal battle over the Bonanni negative ended in 2017 with the footage being handed over to Kodar. It is reportedly stored at the premier Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Other reels of Don Quixote are in collections at the Filmoteca Española in Madrid, Cinémathèque Française in Paris and Pordenone’s Cinemazero in Italy.
Related Don Quixote content
• Mauro Bonanni, worked on ‘Don Quixote,’ dies at 73
• ‘Don Quixote’ dispute ends, negative handed over to Oja Kodar
• Juan Cobos on ‘When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?’
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