Orson Welles' *Don Quixote* Will Come to Life 70 Years Later
One of the most mysterious unfinished works in the history of cinema may finally get a conclusion. The film “Don Quixote,” on which director Orson Welles worked for over 20 years, is set to be restored using dozens of hours of footage preserved in various archives across Europe.
The goal is to complete the reconstruction of the film no earlier than 2028. A team of film archives from France, Spain, and Italy is working on the project together with the Munich Film Museum.
Orson Welles began work on his own adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ famous novel back in 1957. Initially, the film was planned as a television project with the support of Frank Sinatra, but those plans never came to fruition. After that, the director did not abandon the idea. He returned to filming at various times over the years whenever he secured funding, shooting individual scenes in Mexico, Italy, and Spain. Work on the film continued, in fact, until Wells’s death in 1985.
Now, researchers studying the director’s work are attempting to piece together the film from what remains after many years of shooting. The reconstruction is being led by Wells scholar and former director of the Catalan Film Archive, Esteve Riambau. According to him, the team has about 30 hours of video footage that needs to be reviewed, digitized, and organized.
Part of the film is stored in Italy, Spain, and France. In Rome alone, about 50,000 meters of negatives need to be digitized. “We don’t have the complete screenplay, but we have enough material to reconstruct it. Half of the material exists as negatives in Rome, which need to be printed before we can view them,” said Riambau.
According to the researcher, the main challenge is that filming took place over a period of twenty years, and the director changed his vision for the film several times. “It would be surprising to discover that absolutely every scene was filmed, but I think there’s enough material. We’ll work with what we have. We won’t make anything up, and we won’t use special effects to fill in the gaps,” he explained.
The team wants to bring the upcoming version as close as possible to Wells’s original vision. Researchers compare this process to putting together a mosaic that is missing a few pieces. The film will not be a simple adaptation of the novel *Don Quixote*. Wells created his own interpretation of the story about a Spanish nobleman who imagined himself as a wandering knight and set off on adventures alongside Sancho Panza.
For example, the director changed one of the scenes: in the book, Don Quixote attacks a puppet theater because he thinks he is rescuing the heroine. In Wells’ version, the action is set in a Mexican movie theater, where the hero battles the events unfolding on screen. Most of the film was shot in black and white, although some scenes set in Andalusia are in color. Only part of the soundtrack has survived, but in some scenes, Orson Welles himself recorded the voices of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
The director himself referred to this project as his “baby” and wrote several drafts of the screenplay in an effort to find the film’s final form. Wells even joked that he wanted to title the film “When Are You Going to Finish ‘Don Quixote’?” Now, viewers may be the ones asking that question. According to the restoration team’s estimates, the completed version of the legendary film won’t be available until at least 2028, as reported by The Guardian.
As a reminder, a handwritten letter from actress Jennifer Aniston to the late Matthew Perry will be put up for auction along with other personal items belonging to the “Friends” star.
In France, a fragment of the Eiffel Tower’s original staircase was sold at auction for 450,000 euros. It is part of the historic structure that once connected the floors of the legendary “Iron Lady.” The lot had been in a private collection for over 40 years and caused quite a stir among collectors.
