don quixote - new DVD from Spain

[sergio]

Yesterday I received the new DVD of Welles' (and Jess Franco's) DON QUIXOTE - I have only had a quick chance to look at it so far, but I must say that what I saw truly worries me - a lot of the images have been treated electronically to give the images that kind of weird fringing that was often popular on 1970s SF and Horror films and it appears that the commentary is spoken by someone trying to impersonate Welles' voice, which really seems like a waste of time and effort. This is the version that was prepared in 1992 by Jess Franco and I look forward to watching over the week-end and I have never seen anything but stills of this "lost film" - that said, it doesn't look very good so far...

[jaime marzol]

i have it. there is a guy imitating Orson, a woman is called a stupid bitch, and at one point don q tells sancho he will have to go without fucking to gain strength. it's not a very good film, probably the reason it never came out. the people who will enjoy DON Q are the people who enjoyed F-FOR FAKE, THE IMORTAL STORY, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. i like it. i think it's fabulous. i felt privilage when i aquired my 12th generation copy. and like all of orson's films, it has points of interest unmatched by any director, but it's not for the masses.
you have to be well into orson-heroin, as i am, to enjoy, and revere this film.

ah, where can i get my copy, sergio?

[Jeff Wilson]

It sounds like they may have used a lot of edge enhancement to sharpen the image, but it may not have turned out well, judging from Sergio's comments. As Jaime said, it isn't very good, but it has its moments of interest for Welles fans. You can get it from DVD Go (see Chimes thread in Trading area) but it's going to be PAL video, which won't play on a US TV without a converter or DVD player that converts for you.

[Cole]

Sergio – I at least would love to hear what you think of the DVD. Also, if you can figure out if the DVD is region coded please let us know. I live in the good ol’ US of A and the dictators of production have designated this area “region 1” so if the DVD is coded for another region, I would not be able to play it on my machine.

Jaime – You equivocate. On the one hand you say “it’s not a very good film” and then you say “it’s fabulous.” I beseech you to explain what you mean! (I’ve never seen the movie so I’m interested in your comments.)

[jaime marzol]

cole:
what seemed to worry sergio is the effects, and dubbing franco did, but he didn't say what he thought of the content.
i love DON Q, as i love CHIMES. to me those 2 films are the holy grail of film collections. my best friend, if he owned those tapes, without hesitation, he would use them to record proffesional wrestling.

it's the 'beauty in the eyes of the beholder,' thing. art is where you find it, and i think DON Q is art. but i wouldn't recomend it to anyone. best way to piss off a bunch of your friends is to invite them over to watch a flick and play DON Q, or CHIMES.

i think that any time welles was in control of a camera he created magic, different from all the others who directed. i find everything he did incredibly interesting, and original.

did anybody get a copy of the shakespeare documentary that aired on bravo about 2 months ago? a friend called me and told me it had pieces of welles' MERCHANT OF VENICE.

Cole, i have an article on DON Q written a welles assistant during some of the production. i will post it in the TOUCH OF EVIL thread.

[jaime marzol]

the don q article is pretty long, if any body wants it, download it, and in a week or so i'll erase it.

[Cole]

Jaime – Equating DON Q with CHIMES? I guess I’ll have to place my order right away. As far as turning off people by playing CHIMES, I find that a surprising comment. To me, of Orson’s important films I think CHIMES would be one of the most entertaining for members of the general public. If I really wanted to spook someone off I’d show them THE TRIAL or OTHELLO. I’d be recommending CHIMES to the movie buffs I know, but it’s so difficult to find that there’s no point in mentioning it. Then again, maybe you have personal experience with this and you’ve seen people shudder in horror while watching CHIMES. That’s hard for me to imagine.

[jaime marzol]

equating DON Q with CHIMES only in availability. CHIMES is a great film. first time i saw CHIMES was at a makeshift art theater, and by the time it was over about half of the small crowd had filtered out. i was fine with that, i moved closer to the screen, and put my feet up on the chair in front of me.

i saw THE TRIAL at the same makeshift art theater, and no one filtered out of that one, not even a guy with B.O. that was sitting near me (the thought just raced through my mind that now harvey will post, "lets start a thread on guys with B.O." just goes to show you that a little bit of bitterness goes a long way).

DON Q has some great moments. one moment that only welles can create, is the feeling of how far we as humans have come to being inhuman to each other. sancho panza has lost Don Q, in his search he stops in front of a tv shop, looks in the window, and the inocense of sancho is treated to a news broadcast of fighter plane being shot down. it trully is a heart breaking moment as only welles can bring us.

none of the buttons above this window are for spell check, huh?

[sergio]

I should say that as of yet I have not yet had the time to watch anything but the opening 20 minutes - if I'm honest, I got a bit scared off and frankly felt that I had better watch ot when I had plenty of peace and quite (not much of that around my place so...). I will write more when I've had a chance to view and digest it...

I was sure that Rosenbaum said that a commentary had actually been recorded, so having someone imeprsonate Welles' inimitable (sic) voice seems crazy - Franco (I assume it is his choice) appears to have used a variety of electronic effects in the movie (well, at least in the beginning) which seem remarkably out of place - but maybe theyre 25 year-old opticals created by Welles (I don't believe it though).

I love all of Welles' films (even THE STRANGER), but I think this DVD presentation is going to be a bit of a toughie - a friend of mine was at Edinburgh in 1992 when it was presented there by Oja Kodar and he told me that the reception was very far from positive.

The disc is definitely PAL and Region 2 I'm afraid, though I suppose it would be easy enough to transcode a VHS copy of it to NTSC wouldn't it?

[Le Chiffre]

Franco's cut of Don Quixote has it's moments, but the soundtrack is a mess. They keep switching back and forth between the soundtrack created by Franco and the voicings of Quixote by Welles, which sound to me like they were experimental. Welles tries out several different voices for Quixote, so he probably hadn't even decided which of them he would use (one of his Quixote voices sounds like the old man from THE TRIAL).

I would like to see Costa-Govras' 40-minute cut of the Quixote footage, made in the mid-80s and said to be better then Franco's, particularly in terms of image quality. I wonder if it still exists. But I think the best thing to do with the footage would be to just make another IT'S ALL TRUE-style documentary. There is reportedly enough footage to make several different movies anyway.

[Welles Fan]

I would be interested in hearing more about this, Sergio. The Quixote project never struck me as being all that interesting, and I've seen nothing from it, but it sounds interesting from the snippets you've given us.

As to making a VHS copy-what are you playing it on? Some players (like the Sampo 620 DVE) not only convert PAL to NTSC and are region free, but many are also hacked to disable copyguard, thereby making it easy to make a VHS tape of it. Not that I would reccommend any such course and risk the wrath of the copy police, mind you.

[Cole]

Welles Fan – I hardly recognized you!

Sergio – Thanks for the info. A region 2 DVD? That leaves me out in the cold. But with the luke-warm comments I’m reading about the movie, I’ll casually wait until someone releases a copy here in the USA.

Whenever I think of DON Q and THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, I can’t help but think of the story of Mozart’s requiem. If some no-name composer can do a respectable job of finishing a Mozart piece after he died, can’t we expect – or at least hope – that someone can put a nice artistic touch in finishing these uncompleted Welles films? Just a nagging thought I can’t get rid of.

[Le Chiffre]

I've seen this on ebay a couple of times lately, a region 2 DVD. Obviously it's Jess Franco's controversial 1992 assemblage which most people dismissed as incompetent. Has anybody purchased this? The packaging looks very nice from the photos on ebay. I've got a bootleg of it that I purchased off the web a couple years ago, but I don't think I can really judge the film itself yet, since the visual quality of the bootleg was - to put it kindly - wretched. Thanks for any info.

[Jeff Wilson]

This was the disc Sergio mentioned here a while back; I forget off the top of my head what thread that was, but he said it was okay quality, IIRC. This disc can be purchased from DVD Go, a Spanish e-tailer, for cheaper than what the guy on eBay is asking.

[Fredric]

Sergio made me a copy of the DVD, and while parts are grainy, many parts look good. Watching this film was truly a cathartic experience for me.

I guess there was enough of Welles' touch in it that Franco couldn't have messed it up. Does anyone know what Franco changed? I know that the movie-screen scene is missing, but how much did Welles get edited before Franco got hold of it. For the life of me, apart from the voices of the main characters changing back and forth, I can't tell what Welles did and what Franco did. Am I crazy? This was a great film, IMO. I especially enjoyed the film within the film aspect. Then, on top of that, the movie is in a purposeful state of contradiction: the story goes on without Welles "filming it", but at the same time we see Welles filming it, but at the same time he is still casting it, simultaneously selecting and rejecting the actors/characters for the film.

Then there's Panza looking for the "little black box" that talks to him. Truly Welles! Does anyone know where Welles ends and Franco begins?