Chekhov's Mistress
My Year of Don Quixote
I didn’t spend the entire year reading Don Quixote, but the book has permeated my thoughts over the course of 2005, from building the Web-site 400 Windmills, to reading the book and several others about it, writing on it along the way and meeting some passionate Quixotistas too.
Earlier in the year I had a conversation with Edith Grossman, an excellent translator of Don Quixote, and just recently I had the good fortune to talk on Chris Lydon’s radio show, Radio Open Source with a couple of experts on the book. A fun year indeed.
So, for my last sally of the year, I’m going to venture out to see Orson Welles’ adaptation of Don Quixote on the big screen. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is showing the film as part of their Spanish Cinema Now series, and thanks to the notice by my good friend Dave Levine, I’m going to see it next Tuesday. Even though the film is surely available on video, it’s always a great experience to watch in the theater.
Here’s the description from the Film Society, which is interesting in itself:
“Beginning in 1957 and continuing on-and-off for the next 15 years, Welles self-financed and directed an audacious film version of Cervantes’ Don Quixote which brought the legendary knight and his rotund aide Sancho Panza out of 16th century Andalusia and into the world of modern Spain. Much of this work was considered lost … and the footage that remained was not properly stored! However, throughout the 80s and early 90s the Spanish filmmakers Jess Franco and Patxi Irigoyen tracked down nearly all of the surviving footage, finished the incomplete soundtrack based on Welles’ notes, restored the footage where they could and offered a reconstructed Don Quixote de Orson Welles in 1992…. Don Quixote de Orson Welles presents a very special side of Welles, showing his ability to take chances that none of his peers would ever dare to dream. The film’s production values and continuity are remarkable, considering it was shot in bits and pieces by seven different cinematographers over an extended stretch of time. – Phil Hall, Film Threat
Print courtesy of the Filmoteca Española
I’ll be sure to report back here with my impressions. Somehow I have the feeling that my relationship with this book is far from over – in fact I’m more interested in it as time goes on – but Welles’ interpretation, which I recall a French translator saying she looked to to develop impressions of the book herself, is a fitting way to close the year.
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: December 23, 2005
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
