Film editor Mauro Bonanni, who worked with Orson Welles on Don Quixote, passed away on Friday, June 10. He was 73.
The Italian film site Quinlan.it, which broke the news, reported Bonanni had been ill. “With Mauro Bonanni goes another piece of the history of Italian cinema,” the website lamented.
Bonanni told Alessandro Aniballi in a 2015 interview that besides Don Quixote, he assisted on the unfinished Orson’s Bag and The Merchant of Venice. He also appeared in the Ciro Giorgini documentary Rosabella: la storia italiana di Orson Welles.
In career that spanned more than 50 years, he worked with Alejandro Jodorowsky, Marco Ferreri and Claudio Caligari.
Bonanni was an editor on Don Quixote from April 1969 until March 1970 and had been in possession of some 65,000 feet (more than 12 hours) of negative.
He held the negative with Welles’ authorization in 1974 when it was at risk of being destroyed after an agreement with the lab where it was housed lapsed.
Shortly before his death in 1985, Welles bequeathed the rights to Don Quixote to his longtime companion, Oja Kodar. But Bonanni refused to hand it over to Kodar.
Bonanni and Juan Cobos, a close friend of Welles and an assistant on Chimes at Midnight, had concerns about Kodar’s plan to have Jesus Franco complete the project from the start and refused to participate. The Franco edit was widely considered to be a disaster.
In letters to El Silencio, Bonanni proposed assembling a group of Welles scholars from around the world to compile and present a comprehensive version of Don Quixote. Bonanni made a 90-minute cut, which was screened for the Italian press in 1992, according to Orson Welles, Author of Don Quixote, Reconsidered (Adalberto Muller, Cinema Journal; Fall 2016)
Bonanni’s claim of ownership of the negative was first rejected by a court in Rome. Later, a Capitoline appeals court upheld the lower court ruling. Ultimately, Bonanni took his case to Corte Suprema di Cassazione, Italy’s highest court of appeal, and lost in 2017,
Kodar has been in possession of the footage since then, but there have been no announced plans to release it.
Related content
‘Don Quixote’: Orson Welles’ vision remains out of reach
‘Don Quixote’ dispute ends, negative handed over to Oja Kodar
Interview with ‘Don Quixote’ editor Mauro Bonanni
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