Don Quixote

Don Quixote is an unfinished film project written, co-produced and directed by Orson Welles. Principal photography took place between 1957 and 1969. Test footage was filmed as early as 1955, second-unit photography was done as late as 1972, and Welles was working on the film intermittently until his death in 1985. The film was eventually edited by Jesús Franco and was released in 1992, to mixed reviews. Origin Don Quixote was initially conceived in 1955 as a 30-minute film for CBS entitled Don Quixote Passes By. Rather than offer a literal adaptation of the Miguel de Cervantes novel, Welles opted to bring the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza into the modern age as living anachronisms. Welles explained his idea in an interview, stating: "My Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are exactly and traditionally drawn from Cervantes, but are nonetheless contemporary." Welles later elaborated to Peter Bogdanovich: "What interests me is the idea of these dated old virtues. And why they still seem to speak to us when, by all logic, they're so hopelessly irrelevant. That's why I've been obsessed for so long with Don Quixote ... [The character] can't ever be contemporary—that's really the idea. He never was. But he's alive somehow, and he's riding through Spain even now ... The anachronism of Don Quixote's knightly armor in what was Cervantes' own modern time doesn't show up very sharply now. I've simply translated the anachronism. My film demonstrates that he and Sancho Panza are eternal." Welles shot color test footage in the Bois de Boulogne with Russian-born American actor Mischa Auer as Don Quixote and Russian character actor Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. Auer had previously acted in Welles's Mr. Arkadin. Tamiroff had first worked with Welles on Black Magic and had appeared in Welles's film Mr. Arkadin; he would appear in his later films Touch of Evil and The Trial. It was the first time Welles had filmed in color since the ill-fated production of It's All True in 1942. However, when representatives from CBS viewed unedited footage they were unhappy with Welles's concept and cancelled the project. The original color test shots with Auer were lost and are no longer believed to exist. Welles decided to expand the production into a black-and-white feature film. Welles's longtime friend Frank Sinatra invested $25,000 in the new film, with Welles providing additional self-funding derived from his work as an actor.