Don Quixote (1957-1992) 116m
The case most often is that name directors start small and work their way
into the system until they can hit the big time. The tragedy of Orson
Welles was that he started at the top and slid down to the bottom, leaving a
wake of tantalizing projects in various stages of incompletion. In some
cases he ran out of money, got stuck in legal falderal, or was just plain
unlucky. One of the few what-ifs that managed to escape oblivion was his
pet project DON QUIXOTE, shot in Spain with his own money, on and off, for
more than a decade. The available footage was left in disarray until an
attempt at a restoration was presented in 1992 by Jess Franco (yes, that
Jess Franco), who had previously assisted Welles on CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT but
is better known for such horror and sexploitation opuses as LESBIAN VAMPIRES
(yes, that LESBIAN VAMPIRES). The resulting 116-minute film was slammed by
nearly everybody, firstly because of Franco's association with the project
(Welles fans and film historians obviously felt that the Master deserved
better than to be tainted thus) and secondly because the previously restored
version of Welles' OTHELLO had led them to hope for equally polished work on
future restorations of his catalogue.
The quality of the DON QUIXOTE print varies widely, and Welle's narration
bubbles up now and then amid some pretty blatant dubbing, but I'm surprised
that Franco and his colleagues managed to assemble as much as they did,
given Welles' careless housekeeping with his film stock and the film's
absence of an audio track. I was expecting 'cheat' shots of reversed
footage and several narrative fills over the top of still photographs (as
was done with more reputable re-creations such as GREED and LOST HORIZON),
but in spite of some missing scenes QUIXOTE appears coherent and conclusive.
Unintentionally, the patchiness of the film complements the capriciousness
of Cervantes' novel; similarly the erratic image quality gives the film an
archival feel, as if these really were pictures of Don Quixote captured
trotting about 16th century Spain. The first hour of the story is visually
repetitive (Sancho Panza dogging the errant knight's footsteps across the
countryside) and, apart from a moment when Quixote runs into a woman on a
Vespa, doesn't contain anything that might mark it as particularly
Wellesian. It gets interesting halfway through (ironically at the point
that Sancho has to carry the movie alone) when the story starts playing
about with the timelessness of Quixote's character. The point seems to be
that certain figures in our consciousness become so iconographic that they
transcend their own fictionality and enter dialogues with reality. Akim
Tamiroff is well cast as Sancho, but Francisco Reiguera is Quixote to a tee,
as if he had stepped directly from the pages of the book. That's quite an
achievement considering that all the dialogue was dubbed in decades later by
different actors. Understandably, QUIXOTE is the least of Welles' features,
but just as intriguing as his major works and not without the mischief and
warmth this story deserves. If there's a curse on Cervantes' hero then it
has so far toppled two visionary film-makers - Terry Gilliam's struggle with
the subject is even more unfortunate than Welles'. In the same way that it
is considered unlucky to refer to 'the Scottish Play' by name, so too may
film-makers caution themselves to refer to future adaptations of this
material as 'the Spanish Novel'.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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