Chekhov's Mistress
On Orson Welles’ Don Quixote
I was pretty excited to see Orson Welles’ vision of Don Quixote. I think his adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial really captured the spirit of the book and figured this would be the same, particularly since I distinctly remember the French translator of Don Quixote saying she looked to Welles’ film.
The Film Society at Lincoln Center had several adaptations of Don Quixote as part of this year’s Spanish Cinema Now series and this film had a near packed house. Going into the theater I heard one older gentleman saying to another, “I hope you won’t be too disappointed, it could have been a masterpiece.”
That turned out to be an understatement. It was so, so bad that we walked out after about half of an hour. It seemed to be missing a sound track and the voice-overs were terrible and even with a bit of narration at the beginning there was nothing but the skeleton of the Don Quixote character or Sancho Panza.
Mind you, this was not Welles’ film necessarily, because it was pieced together by several filmmakers after Welles worked on it for something like 15 years before he died. Still, what I did see was pretty far from even a glimmer of the brilliance you would expect from this man.
He set the film in modern day (around the 1960s) Spain, and instead of capturing any modern relevance, it seemed (from what I saw) to be merely slapstick, and not even in that vain did it capture the essence of the book. I might have stuck it out had I been alone, but I think it was pretty tortuous all together and I wish I had been able to see some of the other adaptations playing in the series.
I’d be interested to know if anyone else has seen it and your thoughts if I’m missing something.
comments
I’ve never had the chance to see Welles’ Quixote, but I never knew he filmed “The Trial”. I read that book last month and would love to know how Mr. Welles interpreted it. Thank you, Bud, and I’m off to see if a DVD exists.
– Ella (01/04 at 06:54 PM)
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