Don Quijote

[jbrooks]

This version might be a bit easier to read --

Existing Footage Of Welles' Don Quixote Shown At Cannes

Variety � May 23, 1986

After a week of waiting, film buffs attending the Cannes festival were finally rewarded with a screening May 18 of the existing footage of Orson Welles' Don Quixote. Production of the film originally commenced in Mexico in 1957, was abandoned, then restarted, and abandoned again. Just 35 minutes of the film was shown here in a very rough state with white spacing inserted between shots. Some of the sequences were seemingly edited, while other scenes were merely rushes. Only the two principal actors, Francisco Reiguera as Don Quixote, and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza, appear.

The assembly of the footage seemed haphazard, and it was not even certain that it was in the corrrect order. There was no direct sound: some footage was shown silent, and in other scenes the voice of Welles was heard speaking for both actors, using different accents.

One point that immediately becomes apparent is that Welles was making the film in a deliberately anachronistic style: in one scene, Quixote and his squire ride into a modern city, filled with cars and TV aerials; gawking bystanders cheer them on. A wry joke has a poster for Don Quixote beer prominently displayed.

The photography was handled by various cameramen at different times, and the differences tend to show, especially in varying grades of stock. Much of it is visually splendid, with classical images of the pair riding across arid landscapes reminiscent of the work of some Soviet directors, such as Alexander Dovzhenko. One especially good scene has Quixote, standing in a wheat field, making an exhortation to the absent Dulcinea.

It's also clear that Welles was being very faithful to the text of the novel, sticking closely to the original dialogue. Reiguera and Tamiroff are perfectly cast, each looking exactly like one's idea of how the characters should be.

Would it have been a masterpiece? The best moments look as striking as Welles' finest work, but there are a few clumsy bits, and unsightly use of the zoom lens, not usual for Welles. Possibly these bits wouldn't have found their way into the finished film if it had been completed. Footage as shown managed to be both fascinating and, for obvious reasons, frustrating.

Film was introduced by Welles' long-time companion, Oja Kodar, who gave a moving address, almost breaking down at one point. Afterwards, in conversation, Kodar said she intends to dedicate her time to getting the remaining unseen Welles footage shown.

The Other Side Of The Wind, toplining John Huston among others, is "nearly ready." She also revealed that some 40 minutes of footage exists from an equally rare uncompleted Welles: The Merchant Of Venice, shot in the Italian city in the mid-1970s, with Welles himself as Shylock.

Two boxes of the film have apparently been lost, but Kodar hopes to unveil the footage that survives, appropriately enough, at the Venice fest this September.

�Strat.


****************************************

Address by Oja Kodar before the screening of Don Quixote footage at Cannes in 1986:

Orson was born on the 6th of May and of course, it can only be coincidence that his birthday and the tribute being paid to him today by the Cinematheque of France and the International Film Festival of Cannes follow each other by only a few days.

Orson had a principle: he did not wish to receive any presents on that special day. He thought it was up to him to give presents to all the people he loved, and God knows he loved the people of France. I know the feeling was mutual.

I remember a particularly significant anecdote: we were stuck in the usual traffic jams in the Place de la Concorde when a man on a bicycle stopped level with our car door, leaned over towards the window, made a �thumbs up" sign and with a big smile said, �Bravo Falstaff!� Orson was delighted and turning to me said: "It was really worth making that film, if only for that man there!."

Today�in Orson's name�I bring a present to "that" man, to "that" friend, to "that" unknown spectator who�I know�is out there waiting in this theatre.

I would like to thank him from the bottom of my heart for his gesture of appreciation and encouragement. Of course, I do not know his name or his profession, but I doubt if he is in the cinema profession. That is why�with your permission�I owe him two or three explanations of what we shall be seeing in a few minutes.

I am a little worried about having agreed to show some extracts of Don Quixote which Orson never wished to show anybody before it was finished.

But it was easy for me�thanks to the warm and friendly presence of Costa-Gavras�to give the Cinematheque�which Orson liked and respected�the negative of Don Quixote. It was much more difficult for me to accept that certain portions of the developed film should be shown on the occasion of this tribute�portions which I was able to find quickly in our place in Los Angeles.

But I understand why the Festival and the Cinematheque should ask me to do this. In fact, Don Quixote has been a mystery and a myth for more than 30 years. Many people who considered themselves Orson�s close friends even doubted its existence. But, in fact, whenever it was financially possible�all alone, without real technical means, without synchronized sound�he would make some more bits. Sometimes months and years would go by, but he always came back to it.

For Orson, making a film held the excitement of the painter's first brush strokes on a canvas. But, for him, the final gesture could only be accomplished during the editing of the film: here lay the essence of his creation.

For this reason, I hope you will feel a sense of discovery when you see these pictures, for this is not even a first editing. At times, you will see rushes where Orson had not yet made his final choice. It is a sketch, a quick study, a rough of a working copy that is old and well used, scratched and not even marked off.

In this work, you will see scenes between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza wonderfully played by Francisco Reiguera and Akim Tamiroff, where Orson wished to dub the voices himself. Forgive me for repeating myself, but this is only a fragmented view where, in spite of everything, flashes of his genius, of his humor, of his incredible appetite for life, will be apparent to those who loved Orson. And I know many of them are here in this theatre.

All I hope is that in this work you will be able to recognize�as does any cutter of precious stones�the diamond in all its brilliance. In effect, Don Quixote is a dream which Orson never finished, a dream from which he was never able to rouse himself.

Thank you.

[major pepper]

As a Cinémathèque française subscriber, I received an e-mail explaining that there will be a new screening for Don Quichotte (the work print, I presume!) monday 27th july, at 8 pm (in Paris).

Here's the text from the e-mail below :

"Chers abonnés,
Suite au succès du film "Don Quichotte" de Orson Welles le 29 juin dernier, nous vous informons qu'une séance complémentaire sera ajoutée au programme le lundi 27 juillet, à 20h en salle Epstein."

[Wellesnet]

Thanks for the tip, Major Popper.

[mido505]

I stand by my assertion that, whatever the material is that was shown recently at the Cinematheque, it is not THE work print whose mysterious travails I have detailed in this thread. Just a few observations:

Editor Mauro Bonanni, who is in possession of the DQ negative at this time, and who claims to have given the work print to Welles's daughter Beatrice in 1970, states that the Cinematheque footage is the work print. But it is apparent from the interview recently posted at Wellesnet that he has not seen this particular footage, and has not seen the work print since 1970, so he is either guessing, or being deliberately ambiguous:

And the copy that is at the Cinémathèque and that will be screened on June 29, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Welles ?

Mauro Bonanni: Well, if you already can retrieve and show it, then that copy was well under way. What it is is the last mounted attempt on which Welles himself worked.

He describes the Cinematheque footage as THAT copy, not THE copy, and implies that it is a diferent assembly, or version, or attempt, than the one that he worked on.

For a film that several editors have described is nearly finished, at least in terms of individual sequences (not the sound, however), the footage shown recently seems more like a beginning, like something just started:

- The print is composed of roughly edited scenes (with inevitable splice marks, scratches and leader) and what appear to be assembled, unedited dailies (very clean), with multiple takes, or what amounts to b-roll. Some shots, particularly some of the city scenes, look incredible in 35mm, with fine detail and good contrast. Others, look more like the overly lit desert shots prominent in the Franco version, with blown out whites and little shadow detail. Overall, for a work print, I thought it looked very presentable.

-Considering the number of years Welles worked on this film, I was somewhat surprised by how rough the edit was. None of the scenes looked even remotely polished and the inclusion of raw dailies gave me the impression that the post work had only begun. Of course, since Welles was prone to re-think, re-work and re-edit, this copy could have been in the midst of an re-do when he left it.

In fact, the footage sounds very much like the same footage edited by Costa-Gavras and presented at Cannes in 1986:

Just 35 minutes of the film was shown here in a very rough state with white spacing inserted between shots. Some of the sequences were seemingly edited, while other scenes were merely rushes. Only the two principal actors, Francisco Reiguera as Don Quixote, and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza, appear.

The assembly of the footage seemed haphazard, and it was not even certain that it was in the corrrect order.

Further confirmation that this is the same footage was made by Ciro Giorgini:

But this workprint handed over in Paris, who has it now?

That is at the Cinémathèque Française. It's there because it was given to the keepers of the Cinémathèque, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it was donated to them by Welles himself. That copy was projected in May 1986 in Cannes, in memory of Welles, who had died a few months before.

A few interesting points here. First, Ciro backs up the idea that the Cinematheque footage is THE workprint, and that the Costa-Gavras footage and the recently exhibited footage are the same (or, given the time differences, from the same source). But he claims that the work print was given to Beatrice in Paris, not in Rome, as Bonanni stated:

And then the work print of Don Quixote was delivered, afterwards, to his daughter, Beatrice?

Mauro Bonanni: Yes, we met in Rome, at the Piazza del Popolo, and I gave it to her. I put everything into the suitcases. But I do not remember how long after that happened. Consider that was a lifetime ago.

His film editor Mauro Bonanni, and his production secretary Rosalba Tonti [sister of Giorgio, who had acted as cinematographer for Don Quixote, and whose son is Aldo Tonti] subsequently brought a copy of Don Quixote to Paris to hand over to his daughter Beatrice Welles. They had never met in person, so Bonanni proposed that they do they identify each other this way: he had half a torn letter written by Welles, and was reunited with the other half that Beatrice was given, and at that point he could deliver to her the rolls of film.

To complicate matters further, Beatrice denies both stories, and claims she never met Bonanni until 1991.

Guest_93 - In a recent interview, Mauro Bonnani claims he gave a completed workprint of “Don Quixote” to you in Paris in 1969. In an interview you did last year, you said that this never happened. Do you think Bonnani is making that story up, or is he merely misremembering?

Beatrice Welles - No, I met with him in 1991 in Rome for the first time about trying to pull together Don Quixote.

Note also in the above quote from Ciro that he speculates that Orson himself may have donated his work print to the Cinematheque. Unfortunately, Oja Kodar begs to differ:

I am a little worried about having agreed to show some extracts of Don Quixote which Orson never wished to show anybody before it was finished.

But it was easy for me, thanks to the warm and friendly presence of Costa-Gavras, to give the Cinematheque, which Orson liked and respected, the negative of Don Quixote. It was much more difficult for me to accept that certain portions of the developed film should be shown on the occasion of this tribute, portions which I was able to find quickly in our place in Los Angeles.

Oddly, Oja claims she donated the negative of DQ to the Cinematheque, but we know that Bonanni still possesses that, at Cinecitta. Given Oja's contention, likely correct given all we know about Welles and DQ, that Welles never wanted DQ shown publicly before it was finished, I think we can safely dismiss the idea that Welles donated anything DQ-related to the Cinematheque. Also, Oja seems to say that the footage being shown is a hasty assembly of random material that she "found" at the LA home. Oja certainly doesn't claim that she turned over the work print, only "portions".

Strangely, Mauro Bonanni seems to be in possession of quite a bit of work print material himself, which seems to be the basis for the DQ footage projected at other venues over the years. Locarno?

And the Cinémathèque has not done anything with this material?

As I remember it, after the 1986 screening, no further public screenings were organised, not even in Locarno in 2005.

Mauro had these 25 thousand meters of negative material, plus some things that were printed in positive, including the famous sequence of the movie [in which Don Quixote rips a cinema screen with his sword], and some waste. In the 1990s, I went around film festivals to showing these scraps of waste, always making the same argument: "Just think, if they are waste, imagine what could be in the original." They were filled with scraps of splendor, of visual power, of 35mm incandescent power, showing the sheer power of black and white, and they are perfectly crisp.

Bonanni, again in '92, after the screening of Franco's cut in Seville, organized a press conference to protest these claims, and showed an hour of powerful rushes from Don Quixote, in excellent quality.

In the same paragraph, we have Ciro stating that Bonanni had both "scraps" and "an hour of powerful rushes". Which is it?

These people need to get their stories straight. Until then...

[mido505]

The DON QUIXOTE work print, a recap:

Audrey Stainton on the work print:

"Mauro assures me it was a complete film lasting one and a half hours. Some parts of it were not post-synched and some parts needed to be revoiced, because Welles had repeatedly changed his mind regarding the editing and inserted different close-ups that were out of synch. There was no music or sound effects. But all the principal photography had been completed... "

"As late as June 1985, four months before he died, he was on the phone to Mauro, inviting him to Los Angeles so that they could have some more fun together with the editing. In other words, he was still engrossed in the passionate problem of editing Don Quixote right up to the end of his life."

Audrey Stainton on the Costa-Gavras cut, exhibited at Cannes in 1986 (article from 1988):

A great deal has been said lately about Orson Welles film of Don Quixote. Scraps of it (in pitiful condition) have been exhibited in Rotterdam, Cannes and Barcelona, as if to deliberately confirm the general belief that Welles never finished the film, that he wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars (as Charles Higham wrote in his recent book) on a dream he had not the constancy to complete. But this is not true.

Marie-Sophie Dubus, who edited F FOR FAKE, and who did some work on DQ during that period, on the work print:

"DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA (sic) was a film edited. Just some sequences were missing, but the film exists. The film is there in 10 or 11 reels or something like that."

Jonathon Braun, Orson's last editor, who worked on DQ in the 80's:

"The film (DQ) had pretty much been cut already. I know we had to do a little bit of a restoration process on it. Because opening up these splices, decades-old cellophane tape splices, the film would fall apart. So we had to have it restored before we could start physically working on it. I remember that there were some scenes where he was just not satisfied. He was very proud of the majority of it, but there were some scenes where he said, 'I just didn't quite get it,' and he wanted to change some of the dialogue and have them say different things...So we took new approaches to some scenes, but it was mostly re-cutting because it had pretty much all ben cut by the time I got there."

Variety report on the Costa-Gavras Cannes cut, supposedly the work print:

Just 35 minutes of the film was shown here in a very rough state with white spacing inserted between shots. Some of the sequences were seemingly edited, while other scenes were merely rushes. Only the two principal actors, Francisco Reiguera as Don Quixote, and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza, appear.

The assembly of the footage seemed haphazard, and it was not even certain that it was in the correct order. There was no direct sound: some footage was shown silent, and in other scenes the voice of Welles was heard speaking for both actors, using different accents.

jdrouette on the recent showing of the Cinematheque "work print":

- The print is composed of roughly edited scenes (with inevitable splice marks, scratches and leader) and what appear to be assembled, unedited dailies (very clean), with multiple takes, or what amounts to b-roll. Some shots, particularly some of the city scenes, look incredible in 35mm, with fine detail and good contrast. Others, look more like the overly lit desert shots prominent in the Franco version, with blown out whites and little shadow detail. Overall, for a work print, I thought it looked very presentable.

- The scenes aren’t assembled in any particular order. The reels were probably not clearly marked, since Welles didn’t intend to show the print to anyone not working with him, so the editors who put them together probably just took a best guess.

- Considering the number of years Welles worked on this film, I was somewhat surprised by how rough the edit was. None of the scenes looked even remotely polished and the inclusion of raw dailies gave me the impression that the post work had only begun.

Jonathan Rosenbaum on the Costa-Gavras cut:

I don't like that assembly nearly as much as some of the other things

Oja Kodar on the Franco cut:

there's a scene where Orson's voice as the narrator talks to Sancho Panzo, and Sancho Panzo turns towards the camera and talks to the audience. It's a very wide shot, but they did an optical zoom-in on that shot, and it's not in the spirit of Orson. It's something that jumps out at you.

From the Variety review of the Costa-Gavras cut:

The best moments look as striking as Welles' finest work, but there are a few clumsy bits, and unsightly use of the zoom lens, not usual for Welles.

Oja Kodar on the Franco cut:

He got 40 minutes of edited material that had already been put together by Orson

Ciro Giorgini on the Franco cut:

Exactly. I know and recognise the Don Quixote material, and I can tell you that the Don Quixote prepared by Jess Franco is entirely made of waste materials, and of bits of In the Land of Don Quixote [a documentary on Spain made by Welles for RAI and aired in '64].

Roger Ryan on the footage shown at Locarno in 2005:

...I can attest that the QUIXOTE footage shown at Locarno was in excellent condition, not even comparable to the footage shown in Franco's version...I should clarify that "rushes" is probably the wrong term to use for what was presented. What I saw was a series of roughly-edited scenes with and without audio. When I say "rough", I mean that much of it felt very loose in that there were multiple takes present or that you would see the actor (primarily Tamiroff) break character before the shot would end...Of course, this could qualify as a "workprint", but for it to be something close to "completed", everything would need to be tightened up and the unused takes would need to be deleted from the reels...In short, the QUIXOTE footage shown at Locarno was an entertaining collection of snippets from the film, but it was not even close to representing anything that told a story. If memory serves, the sound footage showed Welles talking with McCormack on a hotel patio and in a horse-drawn carriage (only McCormack's lines were dubbed) and the scene where Panza finds Quixote in a cage. Silent footage included the celebrated movie theater scene (where Quixote attacks the screen), Quixote being "attacked" by an army of sheep, Quixote taking a bath on a rooftop (with a "Don Quixote" beer ad billboard visible in the background), Quixote and Panza stopping on a street to look in a store window selling televisions (as I recall, there was space left for insert shots to show what they saw on the TV screens, but this was not shown), Panza looking into the window of a automobile and seeing Welles himself who appears surprised to see him (a very nice POV shot follows as we watch Panza growing smaller in the rear window as the car drives away) and lots of takes of Tamiroff as Panza dancing/playing with children and entertaining onlookers in what looks like spur-of-the-moment improvised footage. Apart from the aforementioned "cage" scene, the movie theater scene was the most tightly-edited of all the QUIXOTE footage shown.*

An observation by Roger Ryan:

The description of the QUIJOTE workprint screened on Monday makes it sound like the same footage which was screened in Locarno in 2005. While I don't recall seeing the battle with the abandoned railway car, I know the rest of it was part of that presentation.

Ciro Giorgini on the pedigree of the Locarno footage:

And the Cinémathèque has not done anything with this material?

As I remember it, after the 1986 screening, no further public screenings were organised, not even in Locarno in 2005.

Another observation by Roger Ryan:

Not only were substantial portions of the workprint shown in Locarno on August 7th, 2005 (courtesy of the Cinémathèque Française), but Mr. Giorgini was present at the screening and provided an introduction to it.

Note that, per Roger Ryan's recollection, the Locarno exhibition included some of the Patty McCormack footage, including the celebrated movie theater scene, the one specific edited scene that we know Bonanni possesses. None of that footage was shown at the Cinematheque (from jdruoettes post):

Therefore, it does not contain any Patty MacCormack footage (alas, the movie theatre scene is absent), nor does it contain some of the competed scenes from the Franco cut, such as the one of Quixote attacking Paola Mori on her motorscooter.

Oja Kodar on the Franco cut (1994 interview):

I got a call from Juan Almalbert, and he said he had an English version of Don Quixote and he was going to show it at the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They had prepared this English version, but had never bothered to call me for advice or anything. I thought it would be a good idea to see what they did, so I went to New York, and introduced the film to the audience, but when I saw the film, I was appalled! It was the same as the Spanish version, only spoken in English.

Right now, they cannot sell the film, or give it do a distributor without my authorization. I did sell the material to the Spanish Minister of Culture, but I was afraid that it was going to get out of my hands, and my lawyer was smart enough to make sure I had to authorize the final version of whatever they came up with. I wasn't just going to sell them this material and say goodbye to it. I'm not a cynic; I wanted it to be finished as close as possible to what Orson had in mind. We cannot really know how Orson would have done it, because we're just crawling behind him, but at least give an honest effort to do what Orson wanted. Now they're stuck with me. I don't know what will happen next.

The English-language version of the Jess Franco DQ cut was released on DVD in 2008.

[jdrouette]

Thanks mido505 for the recap.

Now having re-watched the Franco cut a few weeks after the Cinémathèque Française's work print, a few things have become more clear to me:

- Jess Franco's editors had access to at least some of the Paris work print's footage. In fact, the scenes that looked the most polished in the work print made it into the Franco cut (ie. the junkyard scene, the rooftop bathtub scene, and the one in which Sancho dances for the group of boys look almost the same in Franco's version). These edited scenes had almost identical cutting patterns, so it seems very likely (if not absolutely certain) that Franco's team based their work on Welles's cut.

- In some cases, Franco's cut filled in the gaps still present in the work print (ie. Sancho watching the TV report on rockets). The work print was missing many reverse angle shots, which Franco's cut restored.

- Strangely, the Franco cut included many of Welles's recorded dialog (scratch?) tracks not heard in the Paris print, which suggests that he had access to other edited sections that Welles had worked on. I also recall some Welles dialog in the Paris print that Franco did NOT include in his cut.

I did gain a new appreciation for some of Franco's efforts after seeing the Paris print, although it really is a shame than Mauro's offers to bring his wealth of knowledge about the film (not to mention his footage!) were not accepted.

For now, it seems, Quixote's impossible quest continues...

[Le Chiffre]

Unfortunately, the Welles world is filled with all kinds of contradictry statements. Here's Variety's 1992 review of the Franco:
http://variety.com/1992/film/reviews/do ... 200429671/

...the visual quality of the copy unspooled in Cannes is appalling. At the earlier screenings of footage in Cannes and L.A., “Don Quixote” had a brilliant, high-contrast black-and-white look that was unmistakably Wellesian and satisfied viewers even in a very rough assembly.

Here, the material appears, for the most part, like third-generation dupes. Many of the images are very fuzzy, and there is an annoying preponderance of seemingly lab-generated effects, including freeze-frames, animation and artificial zooms. Very little of the footage has the breathtaking clarity of the scenes or stills seen previously.

[mido505]

I originally wrote this in 2008, and stand by it 100%. I am reposting it for two reasons:

1) The Patty McCormack footage was not to be found in the recent showing of the "work print" at the Paris Cinematheque.

2) The dread Jonathan Rosenbaum, in a deranged interview recently posted on this Message Board, is still promulgating this nonsense.

As we all know by now, Oja Kodar forbade Jess Franco from using the Patty McCormack footage in his "reconstruction" of DON QUIXOTE because Orson had once told her that he intended to reshoot the footage with his daughter, Beatrice. Let's look at that claim for a second.

Patty McCormack was twelve years old when she shot her most of her role as Dulcie in DON QUIXOTE for director Orson Welles. This fertile shooting period in Mexico was called to a halt when Welles ran out of funds some time in 1957. Because of Welles' chronic financial problems, shooting did not resume on DQ until 1959, when Welles started up again with Tamiroff and Reiguera in Italy.

Patty McCormack was by then fourteen years old and did not resemble her twelve year old self enough for Welles to complete her sequences. Welles, in his inimitable fashion, hired a double who resembled the twelve year old McCormack in shape and stature, dressed her from a photograph of McCormack taken during the 1957 shoot, and shot a few desultory long shots. Displeased with the result, Welles put the McCormack scenes out of his mind and concentrated on other things. Audrey Stainton claims that Welles, at this time, had no intention of reshooting McCormack’s scenes in full with another actress.

At some later point, as the shooting of DQ dragged on, Welles apparently told Oja Kodar that he wanted to reshoot the Patty McCormack footage with his daughter, Beatrice. Beatrice was born in 1955. She would have been 12, the same age as Patty McCormack when McCormack played Dulcie, in 1967. Welles met Kodar during the filming of The Trial, in 1962; she became his constant companion some time in the mid Sixties. It would make no sense for Welles to want to use an older Beatrice to reshoot those scenes, because the problem was not conceptual, but pragmatic, in that McCormack was too old to finish her part. So Welles must have said something to Oja about reshooting the scenes with Beatrice around 1967, if not earlier (Welles used Beatrice in a small part in Chimes At Midnight in 1964 or so). If Welles did say this to Oja, it seems to have been more as a surmise than as a fait accompli. According to Stainton, “As late as 1970, Giorgio Tonti [Welles’ camera operator] tells me, he started to search for yet another girl who looked like Patty McCormack. Had he found one, it would have been a good excuse to shoot some more.”

Welles never did get around to filming those scenes with Beatrice, and for good reason: he seems to have decided on keeping the McCormack footage, having solved his problem without having to use his daughter. According to Audrey Stainton, the Patty McCormack scenes were in the nearly complete workprint that Welles took possession of in 1971. I quote Stainton:

“Mauro assures me it was a complete film lasting one and a half hours. Some parts of it were not post-synched and some parts needed to be revoiced, because Welles had repeatedly changed his mind regarding the editing and inserted different close-ups that were out of synch. There was no music or sound effects. But all the principal photography had been completed; Francisco Reiguera had finished shooting his part long before he died; and Welles had solved the problem of Dulcinea by a masterly combination of close-ups of Patty McCormack and long or half-concealed shots of a girl resembling her whom he had found in Spain.”

I would hate to think that much of this nonsense regarding DQ resulted from a musing comment that Orson Welles made to his girlfriend over forty years ago.

[Jedediah Leland]

I agree with mido505 that it's unlikely the Paris Cinematheque reels screened as "the workprint" are in fact the workprint. As the above quotations show, there's just too much of a disparity between the almost-complete film clearly described by Bonanni in 1970, and corroborated by Jonathon Braun in 1984-5 (with its decades-old, yellowing tape over the splices), and the clearly-still-rough material screened by the Cinematheque. If it was just that the soundtrack had been lost, I could accept that this was the workprint. But it's also reportedly filled with rough assemblies of footage and repeated shots. This isn't a much-amended edit modified from a coomplete cut, this is a rough assembly of footage, still a work-in-progress. This is not the workprint. As mentioned earlier in this thread, it's most likely to be some stuff Welles had lying about the house in LA in 1985, maybe a discarded semi-complete cut from the 1960s?

But I was intrigued by one of the questions in the recent bonkers Italian interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum over at viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2571 In it, the interviewer asks the following:

In fact there is a working copy in Paris, which the editor of the negative, Mauro Bonanni, had, now impounded in the courtcase with Oja Kodar [Welles's last companion], and then there seems to be other material to Madrid. Do you agree?

Yes, we should make allowances for possible confusion and mistranslation. But could it be that there are two sets of workprint materials in Paris? One is the stuff screened by the Cinematheque, posthumously donated by Oja in 1986. Could the other material, which is the workprint, be in the same city? Rosenbaum certainly doesn't deny any of that in his answer, he instead chooses to talk about how the other material in Madrid turned out to be a dead end. So does that mean he agrees with the premise of the question, that there's an impounded workprint in Paris? Remember, this interview was from c.May-July of this year, when the Paris screening was known about, so the Paris Cinematheque workprint materials can't have been the "impounded" materials referred to.

I'd take the suggestion that the workprint is in Paris with a pinch of salt, possibly a result of misunderstanding/mistranslation. But I'm intrigued by the notion that the "working copy" has been impounded as part of the ongoing litigation. That would make a lot of sense. Bonanni himself seems to possess the 35mm negative, but no workprint material other than a fully-edited copy of the cinema scene. But could it be that the whereabouts of the workprint has been identified, and that it's been impounded as part of the court case?

In support of this, look at what Beatrice had to say in her April 2014 Wellesnet interview at http://www.wellesnet.com/beatrice-welle ... nceptions/ which put to her a question that was originally raised on this very thread:

On the Wellesnet Message Board, there is discussion – and a hope – that you are in possession of an edit of Don Quixote done by your father?

No. There is (an edit of Don Quixote) and it is in Italy… (Welles' former editor Mauro Bonanni) got in touch with me and asked, ‘Do you know I have this.’ I actually met with him in Rome (in 1992) and there were so many complications legally that I couldn’t do anything unless I had a ton of money.

Again, it's possible that this is down to a misunderstanding and that she's referring to the negative material Bonanni has. But it does sound like an explicit reference to that edit, the workprint, being in existence. She's certainly not referring to the Paris Cinematheque material.

[mido505]

Nice to see you weighing in, Jedediah. As always, your contribution is extremely insightful.

In fact there is a working copy in Paris, which the editor of the negative, Mauro Bonanni, had, now impounded in the courtcase with Oja Kodar [Welles's last companion], and then there seems to be other material to Madrid. Do you agree?

That quotation popped out at me, too. Unfortunately, the interviewer's following statement seems to contradict it:

And I can imagine very well in fact that the workprint in Paris is only one of the possible versions of the Quixote. Also because it is far from accomplished. There are some perfectly assembled sequences, but there are also many with the repeated takes.

However, this is not a necessary contradiction - there is still the possibility that the interviewer is discussing two different "working copies".

Interestingly, in the appendix to Rosenbaum's own DISCOVERING ORSON WELLES, he describes the Paris material as "a few scenes, mainly silent and roughly edited", which is a fairly close approximation of what was shown at the Cinematheque.

I also must point out that Rosenbaum states that Welles told him, in 1972, during their historic lunch, that "the film by then was virtually complete, needing only some additional sound work, including music". This matches Bonanni and Stainton's assertions from roughly the same period, and, more importantly, with Jonathon Braun's observations from the early 80's.

As you point out, Jedediah, the standard trope is that Bonanni only possesses the movie theater sequence in positive. But, as with all things DQ, the conventional narrative appears wrong:

On the Wellesnet Message Board, there is discussion – and a hope – that you are in possession of an edit of Don Quixote done by your father?

No. There is (an edit of Don Quixote) and it is in Italy… (Welles' former editor Mauro Bonanni) got in touch with me and asked, ‘Do you know I have this.’ I actually met with him in Rome (in 1992) and there were so many complications legally that I couldn’t do anything unless I had a ton of money.

That quotation also popped out at me at the time, but I ultimately dismissed it as Beatrice confusing the work print with the negatives, as so many had done. But then Wellesnet published an interview with Ciro Giorgini, who said this:

Mauro had these 25 thousand meters of negative material, plus some things that were printed in positive, including the famous sequence of the movie [in which Don Quixote rips a cinema screen with his sword], and some waste. In the 1990s, I went around film festivals to showing these scraps of waste, always making the same argument: "Just think, if they are waste, imagine what could be in the original." They were filled with scraps of splendor, of visual power, of 35mm incandescent power, showing the sheer power of black and white, and they are perfectly crisp.

Bonanni, again in '92, after the screening of Franco's cut in Seville, organized a press conference to protest these claims, and showed an hour of powerful rushes from Don Quixote, in excellent quality.

An hour of powerful rushes is a lot, although we don't know how completely edited these "powerful rushes" were. But if I am correct that the material exhibited at Locarno in 2005 came from Italy and not Paris, then Bonanni possesses a lot of important material beyond just the negative.

At several points Rosenbaum mentions DQ material held in Madrid and in Barcelona. Rosenbaum spent some time going through the Madrid material, which turned out to be scraps related to Franco's DQ cut, and IN THE LAND OF DON QUIXOTE. As far as I can discern, Rosenbaum has not had access to the Barcelona material, which, according to Jose Maria Prado, director of the Filmoteca Espanola, are negatives.

Now that is interesting, because we keep hearing that Bonanni possesses most of the negative. My guess is that Bonanni has the negative from the Mexican and Italian shoots, while Barcelona holds the negatives for the material that Welles shot in Spain (under the cover of shooting ITLODQ for Italian television) with Tamiroff (the running of the bulls, etc.). In Franco's DQ cut, that material is in the best shape, suggesting he had access to negatives, but does not look like it was edited by Welles, which suggests the same. Conversely, the stuff from the Mexican and Italian shoots in Franco's cut, obviously edited by Welles, looks dreadful, suggesting dupes of dupes, which brings me back to Rosenbaum's "versions" theory.

While I don't buy that theory as Rosenbaum presents it, it does contain a grain of truth. There are really only two versions of DQ: the version nearly completed by 1972, that Welles tinkered with his entire life, which is concrete, although MIA, and the re-conception as an essay film formulated by Welles in the 80's, which remained theoretical, as no footage for that re-conception has surfaced, which makes sense given that Welles told interviewer Bill Krohn that he hadn't started shooting yet. We do know that Welles sent Graver out to film some color footage of windmills, but that footage has disappeared.

That being said, it is very clear that Welles loved to tinker with DQ. Given the enormity and duplication of DQ footage that exists, I think that Welles often duped sequences off his work print and other rushes, and played with the footage, perhaps incorporating some changes in the workprint itself if he was satisfied (that seems to be what Welles was doing with Braun). But these "versions" were spokes from a central hub, or shoots from the main stem, as it were, which was the fabled DQ work print that has become the Holy Grail for Welles aficionados. Even the late period re-conception as an essay film would have been built around this core, I think. In discussing the DQ essay film with Bill Krohn, Welles said this:

Welles: We had also a kind of long thing about Pamplona...with Sancho Panza among the crowds. Nobody paid any attention to him, they thought he was just a Spanish fool. He was all dressed up, just like an actor in costume. But that was the plot, in which Don Quixote was going to go to the moon, by accident.

Krohn: That was an earlier version of the film, I believe.

Welles: That was right at the end of shooting at all. Then, of course, when people really did get to the moon, that ruined all that, and I had to throw all that out. But it will be in the movie when I release it.

Here we have Welles stating that an important conceptual chunk of DQ, that everyone in the agreed-upon narrative insists that Welles had abandoned, forcing him to create a new "version", would be in the film "when he released it". Perhaps it is best to think of DQ, not as a series of "versions", but as a set of discrete segments, or sequences, that Welles moved around at will, much as he moved around chapters of Kafka's unfinished THE TRIAL. In a sense, DQ was always Welles's meditation on his adaptation of Cervantes' novel; he was always two steps back from, or ahead of, if you prefer, himself. Therefore, Rosenbaum's suggestion for DQ does make sense:

So I think the best solution by far is to let out all the existing material on DVD, putting it in sequence, without any kind of intervention.

Exactly. Now that Welles is no longer around to meditate on his own project for us, we have to do the job ourselves.

[Jedediah Leland]

I'd like to add another thought. I've assumed above that the Paris Cinematheque material was donated there by Kodar around 1986, which would coincide with the date of the screening of the Costa-Gavras screening, which was organised in association with the Cinematheque. Kodar claims to have donated something to the Cinematheque (she actually says it was "negative", but this workprint is positive material). Yet the evidence that this particular material is from Kodar is rather slim - it's officially listed as being donated in 1996, and it's previously been speclated that this was a typo meaning 1986. While that's quite possible, it's no more of a leap than guessing that this was actually donated in 1966.

Now Ciro Giorgini speculated:

It's there because it was given to the keepers of the Cinémathèque, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it was donated to them by Welles himself.

Could this have actually happened? Mido505 discounts it as unlikley, but could Welles have deposited some material at the Paris Cinematheque?

Let's bring in the (in)famous Andrés Vicente Gómez, who is familiar to everyone acquainted with The Other Side of the Wind. In 1972-4, Gómez signed an exclusive contract with Welles to act as Producer in finishing all of Welles's then-unfinished projects that he wished to complete: DQ, TOSOTW, F for Fake, Orson's Bag, and Filming Othello. Gómez writes in his memoir at http://www.lolafilms.com/en-us/who-we-a ... elles.aspx

we had a meeting with Henri Langlois - the mythical director of the French Cinematheque (Film Library) - to retrieve part of the negative of "Don Quijote"

In other words, prior to 1972-4, part of DQ had already been deposited in the Cinematheque. So maybe Welles did leave it there himself?

That would be consistent with the speculation above that the Cinematheque materials look like an earlier, mid-1960s assembly of footage, from a version of DQ that was being worked on before the 1969 "moon landing" edit that was scrapped, and before the 1970 edit prepared with Bonanni, the latter of which can be considered to be the workprint.

[mido505]

In other words, prior to 1972-4, part of DQ had already been deposited in the Cinematheque. So maybe Welles did leave it there himself?

That would be consistent with the speculation above that the Cinematheque materials look like an earlier, mid-1960s assembly of footage, from a version of DQ that was being worked on before the 1969 "moon landing" edit that was scrapped, and before the 1970 edit prepared with Bonanni, the latter of which can be considered to be the workprint.

That's brilliant!

[Jedediah Leland]

Thanks, mido505. I think it's a distinct possibility.

I'm not saying that Oja hasn't donated some DQ material to the Cinematheque at some stage, or that the workprint doesn't exist. But I think we should be open to the question of whether there's more than one lot of workprint material out there. We already know that Bonanni has something, albeit such materials are "trimmings".

Also, remember that Welles's 1985 instrument confirming Oja's joint ownership of his films means that on his death, she became the sole owner of the DQ material (until, at least, she sold some/all of the rights in the early 1990s). So this Cinematheque stuff could be workprint material from c.1966, deposited by Welles in the Cinematheque (for whatever reason?), which Welles wanted access to in 1972-4 to make changes to the film he had in the form of the workprint Beatrice had passed on to him in 1971. Roll forward to 1986, and the Cinematheque realise that Oja now technically owns the material they've been holding for the last 20 years. She sees they're giving it a good home, so "donates" it to them, i.e. confirms they can keep holding it. That would explain where the material comes from, how come Welles wanted access to it c.1972-4, and how she came to "donate" this crude, mid-60s assembly of footage which is not the workprint, and which doesn't resemble what he was working on in LA in 1984-5.

This still doesn't tell us where the workprint is, but I do wonder if it is subject to an injunction of some sort...

[RayKelly]

I have always wondered whether it was true that Welles wanted to reshoot the Patty McCormack scenes with Beatrice Welles and if it ever progressed beyond talk. Well, apparently not.
Speaking with Beatrice today she told me: "He talked about it, but you know how I never wanted to act. I would have done it for‎ him of course, but not happily."
I asked her how old she was when this took place and where.
She replied, "I was in London in Cadogan Gardens, so yes 12, I think."
That would put that in 1967-1968.

[Roger Ryan]

I'd like to add that we should be careful when assessing phrases like "nearly complete", "90% finished", etc. along with presuming a "work-print" represents something in a coherent form composed only of selected takes. Both THE DEEP and TOSOTW have been referred to as "nearly finished" by Welles himself at various times and the work-prints we have for those two films are not much different than the material that has been screened from DON QUIXOTE. For example, the two extant work-prints for THE DEEP, which the Munich Filmmuseum combined into one, contain about thirty minutes of repeated takes that would never make it into a finished film. If the QUIXOTE footage we've seen has repeated takes and extraneous bits like slating the shots, that doesn't mean that there must be a more polished version hidden somewhere.