Don Quijote de Orson Welles

Only when one hear Welles narration on the soundtrack of this dog's dinner of a film, does one get a tiny glimpse of what Welles might have been able to achieve in bringing "Don Quixote" to the screen. From what I saw last night on DVD (purchased by a friend recently in Spain!), my guess is that "Don Quixote" is unfilmable, even by a genius like Welles. The 'director', Jess Franco', is no Welles, to be sure. Where and how Franco got his hands on this footage, is as mysterious as Welles himself. Apparently shot over a number of years, the assembled footage, is a mish mash of stills, unrelated footage, an out-of-sync sound track (scenes of Welles in a car shooting footage like an enthusiastic tourist), and ludicrously dubbed American voices, makes this just a slice of arcane interest. In summary, it was 'interesting' to see, but at the end of the day, it manages to tarnish Welle's reputation, rather than enhance it. Still, with 'Citizen Kane', the truncated "Magnificent Ambersons", & "Chimes At Midnight", to his credit, Welles really doesn't need this kind of 'tribute'.

Both Welles and Terry Gilliam have this dream of bringing this film to the screen. Both have had tragic endings in their productions. But at least we have this footage to show what might have been. Unless Terry Gilliam gets another shot, I would recommend to any film maker who will pull it off to research this film as well as "Lost in La Mancha" to see what should be done visually.

Don Quixote (1992)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

After reading about exciting lives involving knights and other creations, a man takes on the name of Don Quixote (Francisco Reiguera) and gets a sidekick in Sancho Panza (Akim Tamiroff) and the two head off to fight the evils but Quixote soon finds out that's not so easy in an ever changing world.

If you know anything about Orson Welles then you know that DON QUIXOTE was one of his dream projects. If you know anything about the history of this film then you already know what a production nightmare it was. If you happen to be reading this without knowing the film's history then it's best that you actually go out and read about it. There are many great, very detailed articles and books out there but the short version is that this began life as a TV project but Welles decided to turn it into a feature but there were countless production problems and what began shooting in 1957 wasn't even complete in 1969 when the lead actor died. After countless legal battle, Jess Franco was able to get the job as editor and put together the current version that is out there now but the debate goes on from this as his version features footage that Welles didn't shoot and there's still a lot of missing footage that couldn't be used due to legal issues.

A lot of the hatred for this "film" went in the direction of Franco, which just wasn't fair. If you read about the production and legal issues with this film then it's really hard to blame anyone except for Welles and especially when you considered that he just kept shooting new stuff for nearly a decade and he kept running into more and more problems. It certainly wasn't Franco's fault that Welles didn't really have a narrative for the film and it's not Franco's fault that there were legal issues that prevented all of Welles' footage from being included. However, with that said, what's here is mildly entertaining in its own surreal way.

I say that because there's all sorts of footage here that more times than not doesn't make sense. The film was shot silent with the plan of adding narration and dialogue at a later time. Some of the narration was done by Welles himself but some of it he didn't record so another person had to pretend to be Welles and add it rather obviously. The two main performances were rather interesting to say the least and throughout the various formats that the film is shot, there's something here that remains entertaining and it's just so surreal that you can't help but be drawn into it. At 115-minutes the film does run on a bit too much but perhaps Franco just wanted to get as much footage in as possible.

Having said that, you could have given this footage to twenty different directors and they probably would have turned in completely different versions. The bottom line is that there's some interesting and weird footage here but it's impossible to know what Welles would have done with it. His brilliant mind might have been able to take ten-years worth of footage and make better sense out of it. We'll just sadly never know because Welles was unable to edit his film and this is all we go. So, do we just let the film remain unreleased or do we try and edit something together to honor the filmmaker? I personally don't have a problem with this edit. If some day we get a new edit I will watch that too but it still won't be Welles' version, which is just never going to happen.

dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York does not know what he is talking about. The fact is, he has only seen the Franco version and has nothing to compare it to. The work print floats around occasionally, and it's a million times better that the Franco version. How can anyone call a film crap, when they have never even seen it. Don't ever listen to people that stupid. The fact is that you should even write a review if you have only seen one version of the film, and have no knowledge of the production history, the comment about Wells never intending to release it, is the most ridiculous, ignorant conjecture I have ever heard. No film make spends nearly 10 years of his life making a film, for it to just be a personal toy. He had plenty of projects that never saw release, The Deep, The Other Side of The Wind, etc. The main reason the film was never completed is that one of the principle actors died.

(This review is based on the English language version)

Orson Welles' legendary unfinished epic was just that - unfinished. It should have been left as such, not thrown together in this clumsy, boring compilation of whatever material was available.

While I'm sure it was done with the best of intentions, the filmmakers have not only failed to do justice to Welles' vision, they've also managed to discredit it by inflicting this version upon audiences.

The first thing that strikes the viewer is the amateurish quality of the audio. Not only are the newly dubbed voices rather poor performances, they're also inconsistent - Welles' original recordings (using his own voice, as he often did) have been retained in a handful of scenes, & they don't match at all. There hasn't been the slightest attempt at consistency. Add to that an extremely empty sound mix which has only a bare minimum of sound effects & atmos - a long sequence during a huge festival (including the running of the bulls) sounds like it was recorded in a deserted suburban street with about three people making the sound of a crowd that's meant to be in the thousands.

However, the real problem is the unavoidable fact that 'Don Quixote' was incomplete, & it's glaringly obvious from watching this. The film consists of a handful of scenes strung together & dragged out to ridiculous lengths just to make up the running time. Case in point - the sequence where Sancho searches for Don Quixote in the city goes on forever. It's just Sancho approaching people in the crowd, asking them the same questions over & over again - there is no way that Welles could ever have intended using every single take in its entirety, but that's what appears here. It lasts over twelve minutes, when, in fact, it would most likely have lasted about two minutes absolute maximum in a proper finished version of the film.

While the start of the film is relatively complete & rather well done, the rest has massive holes which simply can't be filled with endless overlay of Spanish countryside & still more shots of Don Quixote & Sancho going back & forth. There's also no ending. No resolution, no conclusion, no punchline, no point.

Although there is material in private collections that was unavailable to the filmmakers, that couldn't possibly account for what would be required to make this into a complete, coherent work. Welles simply didn't complete shooting, largely due to the fact that his lead actor died before they could finish.

However, putting aside the fact that it wasn't complete, & never could be, one would think that just seeing a collection of footage from this masterpiece that might have been would be enough. Unfortunately, by putting it all together in such a slipshod manner, one is left with a very negative impression of the film overall. In particular, what was clearly a terrific performance from Akim Tamiroff as Sancho is utterly ruined with the new voice & with long, drawn out scenes that eventually cause him to be simply irritating.

Orson Welles' vision for this film was something far more ambitious & complex than a simple retelling of the story of Don Quixote, but that's what has been attempted here, & as such, the point is lost. The only person who could have assembled all the material into anything worthwhile would have been Welles himself, & he didn't.

The footage could have been put to far better use in a documentary chronicling the whole saga of Welles trying to make the film. Welles himself even came up with the perfect title for such a doco: "When Are You Going To Finish Don Quixote?"