Don Quijote

[mido505]

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.

There's some truth to that, Roger, but we have too much evidence, including a statement from Welles to Rosenbaum, that DQ was essentially locked, visually, by 1970-71, needing only music, sound effects, and some dubbing; and that it stayed, essentially, in that form, until at least the early 80's. Here is one quote at random, among many, from Esteve Riambau:

...the editor insists that it was a complete film lasting one hour forty minutes, built around sequences named by the director...There was no music...or sound effects, but all the main photography was complete. Only one image that would complete the final image was missing, an image in which Sancho enters a bar and stares stupefied at a television screen.

This description does not resemble what was shown at the Cinematheque.

Juan Cobos claimed that he saw 80 minutes in 1966 that

were initially stylistically simple, because he had filmed in Mexico for 5 weeks with the idea of working for TV. And this was always the skeleton of the film, as the filming that took place in Rome in 1959 was almost always intended to complete what had already been done.

According to Riambau, this "skeleton" was missing from the Costa-Gavras assembly put together under the auspices of the Cinematheque:

These images show the unmistakable Welles stamp, but hardly justify the years of work and affection that the director had invested in the film...the scenes included in the forty minutes do not belong to the three main blocks that the director had filmed in Mexico.

I must stress that the McCormack scenes were in the 1970-71 cut. Much has been made of a letter Welles sent to Tamiroff around 1961, extensively quoted by Juan Cobos, that questions the continuing relevance of the "Dulcie" framing device, and suggesting a new opening scene set in Venice at a masque ball but, contra esteemed Welles scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, that sequence was never filmed.

Again, I must point out that, despite all the talk over the years of various re-conceptions of DQ, no major new sequences were ever filmed beyond the three main blocks: Mexico (1957), Italy (1959), and Spain (1961), although various random pick-up shots were filmed throughout the 60's, whenever Welles had the time and money. As far as I can tell, all of this footage has been accounted for.

Back to the question of the work print:

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.

The interview with Bonanni recently posted here is immensely frustrating, especially given the fact of translation. However, in reviewing it, I found a few curious nuggets:

In short, seeing that Jess Franco made films much worse than I was doing, I was worried. However, I pointed out a few things at once: first, that there of was need the workprint. Second, that there was need of the black book, the script. He told me that those things were not there. I told him that because, the assembly of Don Quixote had been very long and difficult, something could happen - and it happened - which would affect the perception. So the negative that I had was indispensable - and still is - to remedy these failings of the workprint.

Could he be saying that what "happened" was that the work print, oddly missing from Franco's material, given that he was supposed to have everything available, magically showed up in Rome at this time?

There is also this:

We made a deal, which gave me a bit of money and the rights to the Italian market. And, from the economic point of view, it was fine. It was everything else that did not convince me...
Then I said, ok, I am sending you the positive print looped and edited, so he could not take possession of the negative material...So I told him: assemble the material, both yours and mine, then we’ll cut the negative in Italy and then you’ll return to Spain with it. And in this way would be made the [final release] print.

Bonanni also confirms that DQ material, including the negative, spent some time in Paris:

Among other things, for a period I could not find the film. And this happened when I tried to tell him I wanted to search for the negative of Don Quixote. I knew it was in Paris, but I could not find it. Then one day he called me from Los Angeles and I was able to say, “look what I got: the negative of Don Quixote.”

I'm not sure of the time sequence when Bonanni acquired the negative, but this information does not contradict what Jed Leland posted about Gomez - DQ material, both negative and positive, could have been in Paris in the early 70's, some of which Gomez retrieved at that time, with the remaining negative being transported at a later date to Rome by Bonanni, and the positive variants remaining with the Cinematheque. Having completed a version with Welles in 1970, Bonanni would have had no interest in earlier drafts, but only in saving the precious negative.

[mido505]

More compelling madness from Rosenbaum, from his 2005 lecture WHEN WILL - AND HOW CAN - WE FINISH ORSON WELLES'S DON QUXOTE?

I'd like to dedicate these remarks to the memory of Henri Langlois, who in the early 70's programmed Orson Welles's DON QUIXOTE as one of the first films to be shown at the New York Cinematheque, which was never built.

?????!!!!!

[Jedediah Leland]

Thanks, all, for some thoughtful posts.

Mido505, to belatedly reply, you say:

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.

I think you're spot-on here.

Rosenbaum believes that the best bits are the Mexican footage shot in 1957. The Italian footage is mostly the stuff shot in 1959 and 1960. The Spanish footage will be the bits of Sancho Panza wandering alone through Spain (1961), shot because of the travel ban on Reiguera entering Spain. Those latter bits - in crystal-clear prints, as you say - are ludicrously over-represented in Franco's cut, and drag on forever, when they make up some of the least interesting material, and so I wouldn't be surprised if that was influenced by the availability of the negative.

I think you're also exceptionally perceptive when you say:

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 . . . 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 short, Welles most likely edited a series of picaresque, self-contained sequences, in much the same way as Cervantes structured his novel, and (as you point out) in much the same way as The Trial is structured. The order of those sequences, their framing, and which sequences were included in the final line-up, would have changed as much as individual editing aspects of each sequence.

I do, however, take issue with your assertion:

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

I can think of several more "versions", each (as per your point above) made up of varying different sequences. Ignoring the colour TV movie from 1955, which was almost a separate project:
1) The abandoned "Mexican shoot" version, footage of which would be incorporated into later versions, but which seems to have been different in conception.
2) The "nuclear ending" variant Welles had in mind c.1960, and was working towards for a while, but which also remained unfinished.
3) "Don Quixote Goes to the Moon", which seems to have been the thrust of the project by 1964, which was mostly shot and edited by 1966, and which was actually completed in 1969. This was the version Welles junked around the moon landings (c.July 1969); but again, elements will have been recycled, and Welles talked of taking (if memory serves?) eight reels out of the workprint - not of junking the whole project. So some sequences will have been retained for the next 'version'.
4) The "Bonanni" workprint, worked on by Welles with Bonanni in 1969-70, and essentially complete (minus music and some syncing of its dialogue track) in the spring of 1970. While it's quite true to say that this was just one version, it still existed in 1985, it was one of only two versions to have been completed, and with the destruction of Version 3, it's probably the only version in existence.
5) "When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?", which as you say, was more an unfinished concept than anything else.

While (4) is just one version, I hope we can agree that the workprint of it is still worth hunting down: Welles may have changed his mind later, but it is a complete film by him, representing exactly what he had in mind in 1970.

Roger, I always value your insightful observations, but I disagree with you when you write:

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.

A lot of the misleading impressions over The Deep and TOSOTW being more complete than they were came from Welles himself, ever keen to convince financiers that he was closer to completion than he was. (For instance, his much-quoted remark from 1972 about TOSTOW being "96% complete", which is often used to justify assigning the film a 1972 completion date, when as we all know most of the film's main scenes weren't shot until 1974-5. I actually think Welles was stretching a point but telling the truth - that the film-within-a-film called TOSOTW was indeed 96% complete by 1972, with only some reverse shots for the car sex scene required; and he may well himself have under-estimated just how involved the party scenes would be to shoot, imagining he could get them done in almost 'real time', certainly in a week or two. But I digress...)

Don Quixote is very different. We're not relying on Welles's embellished accounts to investors of the state of his film. We're relying on very specific, compatible accounts from both Bonanni and Braun about the state of the material. After 1970, the workprint was not an assembly of footage - see mido505's quotations on just how finalised a shape the film was in; only syncing and music were required on an already-fully-edited film. According to Cobos and Bogdanovich, each of whom saw Version 3 in 1966 and 1969 respectively, it looks like Version 3 was in that kind of a shape, too, although we know Welles destroyed much of that version and re-used some sequences for Version 4, as described by Bonanni and Braun.

And another thing! Mido505 picks out this rather interesting snippet from the recent Bonanni interview, recalling Bonanni's offer to Franco in 1991:

Then I said, ok, I am sending you the positive print looped and edited, so he could not take possession of the negative material

Given Bonanni's insistence on fidelity to the original 1970 workprint, I can't imagine he's referring to the positive workprint material he already had, that Ciro Giorgini describes as "trimmings" which were discarded by Welles. My original reading of the interview was that Bonanni was proposing to make a positive copy of his negative material, and to submit that for editing by Franco. But you're quite right, it could also hint that by this stage all or part of the workprint had come into Bonanni's possession, which would be consistent with it subsequently being impounded as part of the court case. I'd be surprised if that had happened, but...well, this whole saga has been full of surprises!

And well done on spotting the two other instances of the pre-1974 presence of DQ negative material in Paris. So that's now Andrés Vicente Gómez, Mauro Bonanni and Jonathan Rosenbaum who all claim that at least some DQ materials were in the possession of Henri Langlois and/or the Paris Cinematheque by the early 70s. (Rosenbaum was well-placed to know Langlois, he lived in Paris in the 70s when he was working as Jaque Tati's assistant.) Personally, I think this is most likely to have happened anytime between 1962 and 1968, as that coincides with when Welles was spending the most time in Paris (did he have any dealings with Langlois in the 60s? Did he make appearances at the Cinematheque?), but it could have been as early as 1960 (when the Paris interview was filmed), or as late as 1973 (when he was negotiating the TOSOTW deal with Les Films Astrophore).

To recap, It was in 1971 that Beatrice met Bonanni in Rome (how strange that she previously denied meeting him before 1991, yet now recalls a 1971 meeting, and remembers the exact make of the car that she stuffed a trunk full of workprint cans into - yet another reason to suspect there's more to this than meets the eye). Welles didn't have the DQ workprint in 1970-1. I'd be amazed if Welles was actually doing much editing on that workprint before TOSOTW collapsed in 1976/7, and certainly not before 1973/4. From his point of view, he'd got his workprint back in 1971, but the negative had gone missing. Bonanni makes it pretty clear that when he found the (Mexico and Italy?) negative in 1974, it came as news to Welles. And if the Bonanni workprint he retrieved in 1970 was almost complete, then there wasn't any spare material to insert into the workprint. Sure, he could have just kept editing it down to make his workprint shorter and shorter, but Welles liked to insert sequences too, and since the 1970 cut was not an assembly of footage, there was no more footage to insert. But if my theory is correct that what the Cinematheque material screened last month was actually a 1966 deposition of an unfinished assembly of material, then that could have been exactly what Welles needed to keep tinkering with the workprint - an assembly of footage gathered for an earlier edit. It would have provided extra takes/scenes/sequences for him to draw on for his own workprint. So my guess is that Welles went to see Langlois in 1973 to discuss whether he could access the very stuff that was screened in Paris last month.

Barcelona is a wild card, though. Where did they get their material from? Was it the Suzanne Cloutier negative material?

[Jedediah Leland]

One extra thought, which is consistent with mido505's theory that Bonanni has the negative of the Mexican and Italian shoot, and that Barcelona has the negative of the Spanish shoot.

Bonanni claims that Welles never shot DQ in 16mm; that he has the negative, and that it's all in 35mm, and that he doesn't even know where Franco's 16mm footage is from. He questions the very legitimacy of the Franco edit on the basis that the origin of 16mm footage is suspect.

As we know, Welles shot his 1959 Italian material with equipment 'borrowed' from David and Goliath, and Welles shot his 1961 Spanish material with equipment 'borrowed' from In the Land of Don Quixote. D&G was a commercial cinematic release, and so it makes sense it would have been shot on 35mm film. If Welles was using film stock set aside from D&G, it would have been in 35mm. Now I can't find a formal listing for what ITLODQ was shot in; but my copy looks pretty grainy, and I'm pretty sure it's in 16mm.

So does the 16mm negative material used in the Franco cut correspond with the 1961 Spain material, and is that why Bonanni believes the film was only shot in 35mm? Because he only has the Mexican and Italian negatives, which were in 35mm?

[mido505]

Excellent post as aways, Jedediah.

I prefer to think of versions 2,3,4 as variants on a theme, rather than different versions, whereas #5 is a radically different re-conception of DQ, but that's really a minor quibble. And certainly version #1, a thirty minute meditation on DQ that was to be shown on television deserves its own category. But the important point is that we have ample evidence that a version was essentially locked, barring necessary sound work, by 1971, and that that version seems to have remained intact at least until the early 80's.

There is additional evidence that the Bonanni work print made it to Paris shortly after Welles left Rome. I had always assumed that Beatrice had picked up the work print in Rome and brought it to Welles in the U.S. But that might not have been the case.

Remember this odd quotation from Ciro Giorgini?

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.

That's a much different story, one that blatantly contradicts Bonanni's version. Also, Beatrice, born in 1955, was 16 in 1971, so I am now inclined to believe that she was not part of the transaction.

To recap, It was in 1971 that Beatrice met Bonanni in Rome (how strange that she previously denied meeting him before 1991, yet now recalls a 1971 meeting, and remembers the exact make of the car that she stuffed a trunk full of workprint cans into - yet another reason to suspect there's more to this than meets the eye).

Unless I am mistaken, that is Audrey Stainton's recollection of what Bonanni told her, not Beatrice's. I think Beatrice has been pretty consistent in her denials. But she's not needed for the story to work. Someone, perhaps Tonti, could have brought the work print to Welles in France, where he was often living at the Orvilliers house, outside Paris.

Marie-Sophie Dubus, who edited F FOR FAKE for Welles in Paris during this period, confirms that the work print was with Welles:

I know that he had an editing table at his place outside of Paris and he was working on different films, let's say on Sundays or something like that. But it was other films, maybe DON QUIXOTE...and he had all this stuff at his house...I saw two or three reels of DON QUIXOTE... [which] was film edited. Just some sequences were missing, but the film exists. The film is there in 10 or 11 reels or something like that.

There is very little evidence that Welles worked on DQ after this period, and I now believe Welles left the work print in Paris for most of the period until the early 80's when he turned to the film with renewed interest.

There is a strange quotation by Welles from a 1982 interview with some French journalists. He's talking about his re-conception of DQ as an essay film about contemporary Spain, and he says:

I could finish the film whenever I want. I have financed it completely by myself. Nobody has the right to bother me about it...There are two different films within this film. And I don't know if the original still exists.

From 1972-73, when Welles may have considered showing DQ #4 at the never-built New York Cinematheque, until 1982, when he took renewed interest in the project, Welles might never have looked at the work print, known what condition it was in, or even known where it was. He may have thought he needed to start from scratch, which he could have done, knowing that the negatives were safely with Bonanni, who he called in 1985 to start working again. Welles also called Suzanne Cloutier in 1985 to have her ship her material to him in LA. Cloutier had just done so when she heard the report of Welles's death.

We do know that the work print made it to Welles in LA in 1982 - there are various reports, by Riambau and others, that Welles had it shipped to him there, although the reports always neglect to mention from where. That's where Jonathon Braun picks up the last thread, before it too unravels.

If the work print is in Europe, and impounded, it is impounded, not in Paris, but in Rome, with the rest of Bonanni's material. Whatever the Paris Cinematheque has now, it is not that, but probably the wreckage of earlier versions, along with a 1986 donation by Oja, as you, Jedediah, brilliantly intuited.

Barcelona is a wild card, though. Where did they get their material from? Was it the Suzanne Cloutier negative material?

Barcelona probably has the Cloutier negative material, and whatever positive material that Oja sold, including 40 or so minutes edited by Welles. Riambau has this quotation:

According to Juan Luis Bunuel's account, which is confirmed by others who worked with the director and is verifiable from the takes kept by the FILMOTECA ESPANOLA, he used a perfect Oxford accent for the voice of Don Quixote while giving Sancho Panza a particularly coarse American accent.

Oja turned over a lot of material, some 30,000 meters worth if reports can be believed. Cloutier had something like 10,000 meters, much of which had never been printed. Oja organized a showing at NYU in 1988 that included at least four completely edited scenes, according to Rosenbaum's account. Those are the scenes, I believe, that ended up in Franco's DQ. He was probably working off of dupes of dupes, in order to preserve the originals.

[Roger Ryan]

Roger, I always value your insightful observations, but I disagree with you...
A lot of the misleading impressions over The Deep and TOSOTW being more complete than they were came from Welles himself, ever keen to convince financiers that he was closer to completion than he was...

You are absolutely correct that Welles shouldn't be trusted when making public statements regarding the completion status of his work and that the situation concerning DON QUIXOTE is different. But there seems to be a lot of confusion from all concerned over what a DON QUIXOTE "work-print" is supposed to represent. I think the one thing we can agree on is that all public screenings of QUIXOTE material over the past thirty years has consisted of the same roughly-edited sequences and raw footage, sometimes missing the Patty McCormack scenes (I'm not including the Franco version in this assessment). Added to this, neither Bonanni nor Braun have described footage that hasn't been screened publicly from what I can tell. We're forced to trust the statements of two or three people who claim a more finished version of the film exists that is, indeed, separate from the material that has been publicly screened. I hope this is true.

[mido505]

So does the 16mm negative material used in the Franco cut correspond with the 1961 Spain material, and is that why Bonanni believes the film was only shot in 35mm? Because he only has the Mexican and Italian negatives, which were in 35mm?

Bonanni is confusing on this issue, because he insists that the Spaniards told him that they only had 16mm material, but a 1992 article by Kiku Iwata in the LA Times, which heavily quotes producer Patxi Irigoyen, states clearly that "Welles had shot on 35-millimeter, 16mm and super-16mm black-and-white film".

I think that the 16mm footage is limited to ITLODQ, while the rest of the Spanish material was shot on 35mm. Beatrice Welles recently put a bunch of Welles memorabilia up for auction, including his 16mm Bell and Howell, which she said he used to film ITLODQ; since she was the subject of one of the segments, I think her memory is sound.

Given that the various Spanish shoots were pretty much finished by 1966, Bonanni likely had access to a big chunk of it, at the very least the Pamplona/bull-running stuff, which might be in his edit, and which gives credence to his assertion that DQ was only shot in 35mm. Given that footage derived from the Spanish block has been a staple of DQ exhibitions since Welles's death, I think it is safe to say that Welles worked on some of it, possibly with Bonanni. So Bonanni might have some of the Spanish negs, the scenes that were printed and edited, while Cloutier had other negatives that had never been touched. Given that Bonanni considers the 1972 version as fairly locked, he would naturally dismiss this other material as irrelevant trash. However, by 1985, Welles might have wanted to print and review this footage for possible inclusion in the new revised DQ.

Also, the Spanish footage in Franco's cut looks too clear to be derived from 16mm.

Now, I believe it is possible to print 35mm down to 16mm for editing purposes; wasn't the work print of AMBERSONS sent down to Welles in Brazil in 16mm? To save money Welles might have duped some previously edited DQ footage down to 16mm, in order to tinker while preserving the originals, which might explain the horrendous quality of much of Franco's stuff, but I think that's a stretch.

[Jedediah Leland]

the Spanish footage in Franco's cut looks too clear to be derived from 16mm.

You make a good point. And I think you're right that with ITLODQ, it's all shot in 16mm, and became confused with footage from DQ. That's consistent with Rosenbaum's account of being told that thousands of feet of material used for the Franco edit were stored in Madrid, and his going there only to be disappointed to find that almost all of it was actually material from ITLODQ.

But I seem to recall Cloutier explicitly saying that the material she had (granted, it was only 10,000 feet - much less than what Bonanni has) was 16mm negative. Come to think of it, the whole story of how she came by it has always sounded weird to me. My understanding is that he owed her money, and as he couldn't pay her, he offered her some DQ negative as a security - she didn't actually want the negative, but accepted it nonetheless. This anecdote is undated, but one of her obituaries mentions that she avoided him for several years after Othello, (he was trying to cast her in some roles she wasn't interested in) they re-established contact when she tried to help with funding both DQ and TOSOTW. I wonder if this means the mid-70s? By then, she was living in Canada, and was fairly well-off following her divorce from Peter Ustinov in 1971. Could she have been turned to when Welles was seeking to finish both these projects in 1972-4, and then have been given DQ negative material as security c.1976-7, when TOSOTW fell apart? It's still a really, really weird thing for him to give her as security. Was he actually giving her ITOLDQ 16mm material? Did he make a new 16mm negative from original 35mm negative material of the Spanish shoot? Had he made a copy of the Spanish shoot earlier? Is it all a mistake and was her negative material actually in 35mm?

Incidentally, I don't see that much of a disparity between the accounts of Irigoyen and Bonanni about what was available for the Franco cut. Bonanni was only in touch with Irigoyen early in the production process (around the first half of 1991?). It's quite possible that at the time he was in touch with them, they only knew of 16mm material, and that 35mm material turned up later, by which time they were no longer talking to Bonanni.

Regarding the ever-shifting negative material, Juan Cobos' interview on ITLODQ at http://www.wellesnet.com/juan-cobos-on- ... n-quixote/ has this to say:

In the sixties I had some meetings with the Spanish TV representatives in the name of Orson Welles, to see about importing the film negative from Italy, so he could record a commentary in Spanish after re-cutting the nine chapters [of ITLODQ] . . . What we asked for from the Spanish State TV was to also get the negative of Don Quixote into Spain, free of any customs duties, so he could finish making the film here. The man who ultimately refused the deal, later became Premier in democratic Spain (after Franco), but now has Alzheimer disease, so he has totally lost his memory!

which makes interesting reading. When was this? Cobos mainly worked with Welles on Chimes at Midnight, in 1964-1966, and my guess this is the most likely period when this would have happened (especially as ITLODQ had its first broadcast in Italy 1964, so it would have been "fresh" Welles material at the time). That also tallies with the Francois Reichenbach "Portrait" of Welles shot in 1966 (we can date it because it's during the shoot of The Immortal Story), which shows Welles filming a few shots of DQ in Spain, and would tally with a renewed effort to get the movie completed then.

But I suppose it could have been any time up until 1969. Either way, it looks like Welles had at least some negative material in Italy in the 60s (which makes sense, given he retained his villa with an editing suite there - one can imagine he left his 1957 Mexico and 1959-1960 Italy negatives there, for much of the decade). That might also explain how the Spanish negative material became separated from the rest of the negative, due to the battle with customs officials while Welles was keen to get all his negative in one place at the same time. And it doesn't rule out his having deposited incomplete workprint material in the Cinematheque around then, too.

As with my earlier conjecture that the "1996" deposition of DQ material in the Cinematheque (usually assumed to be 1986) actually being 1966, it looks like so much of this comes back to Welles's movements around 1966...

[Roger Ryan]

...Now, I believe it is possible to print 35mm down to 16mm for editing purposes; wasn't the work print of AMBERSONS sent down to Welles in Brazil in 16mm?...

I believe the AMBERSONS footage sent to Welles in Brazil was 35mm. Welles received 24 reels related to AMBERSONS, 14 of which constituted the 131 min. edit and 10 additional reels consisted of alternate takes and editing ideas according to Wise. A standard 35mm reel would run no more than 10 minutes (for projection in theaters, two reels would often be joined together to create a larger reel running 20 minutes). Fourteen reels for a 131 min. film in 35mm would be about right whereas a considerably smaller number of reels would be required if the format was 16mm. Keep in mind, these reels were sent to Welles for reference; he was not expected to do any actual editing with them. In fact, I'm not sure you can adequately notate cutting choices on a 16mm dupe back to the original 35mm negative (perhaps someone with film editing experience can clarify this).

Back on topic and as "Jedediah Leland" concurs: the footage of IN THE LAND OF DON QUIXOTE that I've seen most definitely looks like it was shot on 16mm which would be understandable for a smaller budget travelogue program. But, seriously, who would want to accept reels of film negative in lieu of payment? I'd say Cloutier was doing Welles a favor by holding on to the material so he wouldn't have to pay for storage.

[Jedediah Leland]

I hope this isn't too hard to follow, but a further musing on Cobos's comment...

In the sixties I had some meetings with the Spanish TV representatives in the name of Orson Welles, to see about importing the film negative from Italy, so he could record a commentary in Spanish after re-cutting the nine chapters [of ITLODQ] . . . What we asked for from the Spanish State TV was to also get the negative of Don Quixote into Spain, free of any customs duties, so he could finish making the film here. The man who ultimately refused the deal, later became Premier in democratic Spain (after Franco), but now has Alzheimer disease, so he has totally lost his memory!

When he talks about "importing the film negative from Italy", it's the ITLODQ negative he's describing, NOT the DQ negative. So when he goes on to describe Welles wanting to "get the negative of Don Quixote into Spain, free of any customs duties", it could be that the DQ negative was being brought in from elsewhere - or more than one place! That would be consistent with Paris (whether it's the Cinematheque, or Welles's house in Orvellier outside Paris) being part of the trail.

Incidentally, I'm interested in mido505's speculation that

I now believe Welles left the work print in Paris for most of the period until the early 80's when he turned to the film with renewed interest.

That certainly sounds plausible, and would explain the lack of physical work on DQ between 1974 and 1982, when Braun notes the trail picks up again. (Note that Welles was in Paris in 1982, to receive his Legion d'Honneur and to make a series of public appearances - he could have picked up the workprint then. And I believe he was in Paris in January-March 1974, negotiating TOSOTW financing with Les Films Astrophore before heading out to Arizona to shoot TOSOTW in March. I can find no trace of any Welles visits to, or work in, Paris between 1974 and 1982, so I think you're onto something when you say he left the workprint behind, and picked it up in '82.)

As for the disparity between Giorgini talking about Beatrice meeting Bonanni in Paris, and Bonanni saying they met in Rome (and being quite specific about where they met, on which square), I've always attributed this to Giorgini misremembering a second-hand anecdote, whereas Bonanni was there. But I think there's a significance to that - Giorgini may have appreciated that Paris was significant, and that something important was in Paris. I wouldn't rule out negative material and the workprint having gone through Paris, and possibly still being there under an injunction. It may well be that a refusal to talk about the workprint and obvious details like its whereabouts are a term of the injunction, which could explain, for instance, some of the caginess and inconsistencies in the statements of Beatrice and Bonanni on this. I do get the impression Beatrice has seen something - when she's referring to DQ being "so so beautiful" in the recent online chat, she did doesn't sound like she's describing the Franco mess:

Quijote? No, nobody is interested. NO money! Unless it's UCLA or something like that. There isn't a soul in the world interested in spending money! The footage should be seen! It's so so beautiful, but have no idea how this could happen . . . I don't own Quijote! Let's talk about something else!!!

[Jedediah Leland]

Just to backtrack, I was scratching my head as to where the 1971 date came from on Bonanni meeting Beatrice to give her the workprint. (1969 makes no sense - Welles only started working with Bonanni in April 1969, and Bonanni started on One Man Band, only moving to Don Quixote some weeks/months later.)

It's the 1988 Audrey Stainton article that gives us the 1971 date - though that part of the article is clearly based on Bonanni's recollection, as told to her. Still, it's consistent with what he's said 27 years later:

More than a year passed [after Welles' March 1970 departure from Rome] before Welles phoned to say he was sending his sixteen-year old daughter Beatrice to collect the cut copy. Mauro met her in the late summer of 1971, in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, where he helped her load Welles' big black suitcase containing the cut copy into the trunk of a silver-grey Austin Mini Minor.

So to answer mido505's question, yes, Beatrice would have been 15 or 16 then. The chronology makes sense, though I do wonder whether she had someone else to drive the car for her? I don't know if it was lower then, but the current minimum driving age in Italy is 18. Nonetheless, I believe Bonanni - not only has his story been consistent, but going to the extent of describing where they met, and which model of car Beatrice was using, seems to indicate clarity. And it's possible Beatrice has completely forgotten about the 1971 meeting. After all, she describes having led a "gypsy-like" existence with her father, always moving from one place to the next - I doubt this was the last time she ran an errand for her father to pick something up for him; and it doesn't sound like she stopped to talk with Bonanni in any great detail - they'd have just turned up, compared the two halves of the torn letter Welles gave them both for identification, and then transferred the cans of film into her car before she was driven off. I can believe she'd forget that. It wouldn't have been a big deal at the time.

[mido505]

As for the disparity between Giorgini talking about Beatrice meeting Bonanni in Paris, and Bonanni saying they met in Rome (and being quite specific about where they met, on which square), I've always attributed this to Giorgini misremembering a second-hand anecdote, whereas Bonanni was there. But I think there's a significance to that - Giorgini may have appreciated that Paris was significant, and that something important was in Paris.

In going through some old posts on this thread, I found confirmation for Giorgini's recollection from the horse's mouth, Rosalba Tonti, the person Giorgini says took the work print to Orson in Paris:

“But the thing is, Orson took DQ with him all over the world. Once he said to me ‘I’ve lost all the edited film’. (So) I went to the lab with Mauro to look for all the takes he had edited. Another time he went to France, then called me and said ‘Bring me DQ’. (So) I went by train with two suitcases.”

Now, Tonti doesn't say specifically that she carried THE work print, or when, but the "two suit cases" are telling. Given what we heard from Giorgini, and Beatrice's consistent denials of Bonanni's version, I think this revision of the agreed-upon narrative is valid.

But I seem to recall Cloutier explicitly saying that the material she had (granted, it was only 10,000 feet - much less than what Bonanni has) was 16mm negative. Come to think of it, the whole story of how she came by it has always sounded weird to me. My understanding is that he owed her money, and as he couldn't pay her, he offered her some DQ negative as a security - she didn't actually want the negative, but accepted it nonetheless.

The references to the Cloutier footage put the amount at 10,000 meters, so it's substantial. Bonanni has anywhere from 20,000 to 25,000 meters, and the number I've read that Oja Kodar sold the Spanish government separate from these is 30,000 meters. The total amount of footage amassed by the Spanish was 109,360 meters, so they must have located material not included in the Kodar, Bonanni, and Cloutier parcels. That's a lot of footage, which is why I think there was a lot of duplicate footage lying around in various states of completion. Note that, in Tonti's recollection, at one point Orson lost a bunch of footage, so Tonti brought him more. Could that lost positive footage have been the stuff that turned up at the Cinematheque? Whatever the case, there seems to have been a lot of duping and printing going on.

But back to Cloutier. I am unaware of Cloutier stating specifically that her footage was all 16mm; that comes from Bonanni. So does the spurious story of Cloutier accepting the footage in lieu of payment. I have two quotations from Cloutier where she discusses her role in the DQ saga:

“Later, after the collapse of the Iranian thing, Orson decided he was going to do DQ. And I said “But Orson: everybody knows you haven’t finished that film!” and he said “I have finished it- believe me! In the last scene, Don Quixote and Sancho were going to go to the moon, but the night I wrote that, man did land on the moon, and it turned me off.” But he still had to do a lot of editing. And then I managed to raise a million dollars from the Spanish government, and we were going to do it. And he gave me the negative to protect that had been lying around various areas of Paris. And we planned this, but then he got ill, and couldn’t do it for a bit. (Later) I had to get rid of my apartment in Paris, and he told me to send the negative to California and we would finish it. When I had already shipped the film, I was sitting with Trauner watching TV and we learned that Orson had died.

“Orson gave me the negative of DQ which he had brought from Paris. I managed to raise funds from 3 sources- one was the Spanish government. In 1982 Orson came to Paris to receive the Legion of honour. He was very ill, and in a wheel chair, and he said ‘I can’t do this. You take care of it.’ In 1985, I had to go back to Paris. ‘What are you going to do with the negative?’ I asked. ‘You must do something!’ ‘Ok’ he replied. ‘Bring the negative here. I’ll call Mauro Bonanni, who has other negative film, and we’ll start working together.’ This was in May. I sent the negative from Paris by ship; I was sitting with Trauner when we saw on TV that Orson had died.

Cloutier makes several interesting points. First, told Cloutier what he had told Rosenbaum and others, and what others have related in different contexts - that DQ was essentially finished, except for the final sequence, because the real-life moon landing had thrown a wrench in Welles's overall conception of the film. Cloutier's statement "but he still had to do a lot of editing" seems to contradict this, but it could mean many things: she could be referring to the dubbing and sound work yet to be competed, or to Welles's new vision for the film.

Second, she places a lot of the material in Paris. She never refers to positive material, only negative. Given all the recollections that we have amassed, and that I don't think even Welles would have left valuable negative lying around the Orvilliers house, I think we can state with confidence that Paris, and specifically the Cinematheque, was ground zero for DQ for several years, until Bonanni and Cloutier respectively took possession of the negatives.

Third, Cloutier is very clear that she held the negative as part of negotiations she was undertaking on Welles's behalf regarding renewed financing for DQ. So what are we to make of Bonanni's story, that Welles gave her the material as compensation? And what are we to make of the inclusion of ITLODQ in the mix?

My suggestion is that these are two separate issues that Bonanni is conflating. While Cloutier held DQ negatives for Orson to be returned when the project was restarted, he gave her ITLODQ. It meant nothing to him, but if DQ was finished and released, Cloutier could leverage this old documentary into some revenue. When Bonanni talks about the Spanish producers "tricking" and "coercing" Cloutier to turn over DQ, he is referring to ITLODQ, not DQ proper, which Oja clearly owned, and Cloutier would have to give up. Think of the story of Gary Graver and the Oscar, for an analogy.

[mido505]

As an aside, I'd like to point out that Beatrice Welles's role in the DQ work print saga, real or alleged, is a red herring. In our attempts to trace the existence and whereabouts of the Bonanni work print over the years, time and locale has been everything. In the beginning, we just wanted confirmation that the damned thing existed, which is why any possible witness to events took on an outsize role - there were not many of them. But now, with more witnesses and new information, we have succeeded, at least to my satisfaction, in proving the existence of the work print in a specific, nearly completed form (at least visually), from 1971 to the early 80's, and in now placing the work print in Paris soon after it left Rome, in 1971. How it got there, Welles, Tonti, Bonanni, or some combination thereof, is immaterial.

That being said, let's go back to the always absorbing yet completely frustrating Bonanni:

But the workprint of Don Quixote was almost final?

Mauro Bonanni: No. Besides the fact that there was little sound, and that I would not have been able to do anything about it, that version was also a kind of puzzle. In fact, he had this peculiarity that, while reels were normally about ten minutes, which corresponded to approximately 270 meters, on the contrary he kept Don Quixote separated into short sequences, which were individually inside cans of 120 meters. Each of those sequences then was even less than 120 meters long. They were from 40 to 60. It was written on the head leader, for example, “Sheep”, “Pamplona”. And so the day he went away from Italy, we did put in the queue, at the close of each of these sequences, what the scene was that had to go after. For example, if it was written on the head “Dentist” and inside was the scene of the tooth, on the tail was written “Sheep” and therefore you knew what to attach later. And then maybe in the queue Sheep was written as Pamplona, and so on.

So could you at least assemble it?

Mauro Bonanni: No, because a single roll was still not finished. However, later, when the Spanish company arrived on the scene and took over, I told them it is crucial to recover the workprint, because on it is at least indicated the order of the sequences. In addition, it must be said too, that Orson was not using the takes that we gave him.

This is very puzzling to say the least, because we have other statements, some from Bonanni, and some from Bonanni to others, the film was nearly complete, needing only dubbing, sound effects and music. And Welles, in the early 70's, told several people that DQ was nearly finished, needing only the final scene, or even shot.

But we can tease out Bonanni's statements to confirm to our counter-narrative. He denies that the film was almost final, but that is because "there was little sound", and because "that version was kind of a puzzle", which implies completed sequences that Welles was shifting around at will, although he seems to have had some kind of order in mind.

But then Bonanni throws water on the idea that the sequences could still be put in order by saying, in response to the question of whether DQ can still be assembled, "No, because a single roll was still not finished." Because Bonanni is very clear that a single roll is a single sequence, I originally took this to mean that THE sequences were still not edited, giving us something like what was shown at the Cinematheque. But now I think he does mean A sequence - the final sequence that Welles was having so much trouble with after the moon landing. The fact that Bonanni then doubles back and says the work print would "at least indicate the order of the sequences" lends credence to this view.

Let me be clear - in no sense is there a version of DQ that is even remotely finished, in the accepted sense of the term. There is little dubbing, no sound, no music, and the status of the script/black book/random typed script pages is ambiguous at best. But despite all the prattle about different version of DQ, the closest approximation we have to one of these versions is the Bonanni work print. Printing new positive footage from the Bonanni and (possibly the) Cloutier negatives, and editing that footage to mirror the Bonanni work print is the BEST possible outcome we could hope for after Welles's death. Given what we know, why this hasn't been done is a scandal, and a fucking shame.

[Jedediah Leland]

The references to the Cloutier footage put the amount at 10,000 meters, so it's substantial.

Thanks for the clarification! As a Brit, I do tend to get my imperial and metric measurement units muddled up...

The total amount of footage amassed by the Spanish was 109,360 meters, so they must have located material not included in the Kodar, Bonanni, and Cloutier parcels.

Yes, but Rosenbaum managed to shed light on that one: it turns out that the vast majority of the material relates to ITLODQ. It looks like actual DQ negative material is Cloutier's 10,000 metres + Bonanni's 20,000-25,000 metres. Kodar had 30,000 metres, but was any of it negative material? I wouldn't be surprised if Kodar's footage, all now held at Munich, was made up of dupes used in the endless tinkering over the years, as you suggest.

Your Cloutier quotations are fascinating - where did you get them from? The Rosabella documentary?

“Later, after the collapse of the Iranian thing, Orson decided he was going to do DQ. And I said “But Orson: everybody knows you haven’t finished that film!” and he said “I have finished it- believe me! In the last scene, Don Quixote and Sancho were going to go to the moon, but the night I wrote that, man did land on the moon, and it turned me off.” But he still had to do a lot of editing. And then I managed to raise a million dollars from the Spanish government, and we were going to do it. And he gave me the negative to protect that had been lying around various areas of Paris. And we planned this, but then he got ill, and couldn’t do it for a bit. (Later) I had to get rid of my apartment in Paris, and he told me to send the negative to California and we would finish it. When I had already shipped the film, I was sitting with Trauner watching TV and we learned that Orson had died.

“Orson gave me the negative of DQ which he had brought from Paris. I managed to raise funds from 3 sources- one was the Spanish government. In 1982 Orson came to Paris to receive the Legion of honour. He was very ill, and in a wheel chair, and he said ‘I can’t do this. You take care of it.’ In 1985, I had to go back to Paris. ‘What are you going to do with the negative?’ I asked. ‘You must do something!’ ‘Ok’ he replied. ‘Bring the negative here. I’ll call Mauro Bonanni, who has other negative film, and we’ll start working together.’ This was in May. I sent the negative from Paris by ship; I was sitting with Trauner when we saw on TV that Orson had died.

Those comments are a real find - though I take some slightly different interpretations from them.
1) That strongly supports your speculation that Welles left the workprint behind in France in the mid-70s (almost certainly 1974), and picked it up in 1982. She confirms she took the negative in 1982 around the Legion d'Honneur ceremony in Paris; my guess is that he picked up the workprint at the same time and brought it home to California for tinkering.
2) Note the reference to how "the negative . . . had been lying around various areas of Paris." To me, that screams out that the Cinematheque was not the only place in Paris storing DQ materials. Maybe he did have something in Orvilliers (as with his houses outside Rome and Madrid, it had an editing suite, so film would have been stored there). Maybe someone else was holding onto it for him. Certainly, it's consistent with Rosalba Tonti having gone to Paris to hand over something, but not necessarily to the Cinematheque. Some of the material in Paris (perhaps the workprint materials in the Cinematheque, and possibly negative materials held there too?) might have been lying around since the mid-60s. Some of the material in Paris (perhaps the Tonti materials, either positive dupes or negatives held by a friend or associate) might have been lying around since the early 70s. Some of the material in Paris (perhaps the workprint in Orvilliers?) might have been lying around since the 1974. If the Cinematheque was safeguarding everything in its vaults, I doubt Cloutier would say that it was "lying around various areas of Paris."
3) That tells us something about how Welles set about finding cash. In 1985, he got the French government to (initially) promise to finance King Lear. Perhaps the idea of appealing directly to a government was inspired by Cloutier's success in persuading the Spanish government to put up some funding?
4) My initial reading of the above was that she must have been involved in fundraising for DQ around 1982-5. But it looks like he gave her the DQ negative before 1982. Did this happen in 1972-4? If she'd previously been fundraising for TOSOTW, surely that would make sense? Did Welles and Gómez persuade Henri Langlois to let them have the negative, in exchange for leaving him with a (worthless, in Welles' eyes) positive dupe from an unfinished assembly of footage, and they then gave the negative to their financier Cloutier for safekeeping?

It is possible that the three-way offer of completion funds for DQ happened as early as 1972-4. Remember, Welles repeatedly referred to DQ as something to be completed "in my own time" - he might have made that clear to his prospective investors, and put any deal on ice until he felt ready to release. And as we discussed earlier on in the thread, he seems to have repeatedly indicated that he would only release the unashamedly "arthouse" DQ after a big commercial hit, to first show that he was still a bankable director. From 1967-70, he had a commercial film in the pipeline: The Deep. From 1970-6, he seems to have pinned all his hopes on TOSOTW, a project that would be both artistic AND (he hoped) commercially successful. If Welles seems to have lost interest in any editing work on DQ around 1977-82, it's no coincidence that these years were some of his bleakest, with no hope in sight for TOSTOW completion, and more importantly, no alternative "commercial" projects in the pipeline. If Welles regained interest in editing DQ into a releasable form in 1982-5, that's also no coincidence: first The Big Brass Ring and then Cradle Will Rock were viable commercial films he had lined up, which both came within a whisker of being made. DQ would have been worth preparing for release then.

Cloutier's statement "but he still had to do a lot of editing" seems to contradict this, but it could mean many things: she could be referring to . . . Welles's new vision for the film.

This is surely the most likely interpretation. Even if that conversation had been as early as 1972 (and it could have been as late as 1982), we know that Welles was already changing the film's conception enough by 1972 to imagine colour "bookend" scenes of windmills shot by Graver, so he already had something different in mind.

I don't think even Welles would have left valuable negative lying around the Orvilliers house, I think we can state with confidence that Paris, and specifically the Cinematheque, was ground zero for DQ for several years, until Bonanni and Cloutier respectively took possession of the negatives.

I partly agree. The Cinematheque would have been the best place for a negative, and the Gómez account seems to confirm that's where some of the negative was kept. But don't rule out the possibility that there was also lots of positive material in Paris, and that other parts of the negative were in other places in Paris. As the above Rosalba Tonti quote confirms, Welles seems to have lost track of which parts of Quixote were held where.

“But the thing is, Orson took DQ with him all over the world. Once he said to me ‘I’ve lost all the edited film’. (So) I went to the lab with Mauro to look for all the takes he had edited. Another time he went to France, then called me and said ‘Bring me DQ’. (So) I went by train with two suitcases.”

As you say, this is no proof that Rosalba Tonti took the workprint to Paris, it's proof that some material held by Bonanni went to Paris. It's fascinating proof that such material was sent, but it's not inconsistent with Mauro Bonanni also having met Beatrice in 1971 to hand over the workprint. "Two suitcases" could be anything - rushes, assembled footage, a duped workprint, etc.

So what are we to make of Bonanni's story, that Welles gave her the material as compensation? And what are we to make of the inclusion of ITLODQ in the mix?

My suggestion is that these are two separate issues that Bonanni is conflating. While Cloutier held DQ negatives for Orson to be returned when the project was restarted, he gave her ITLODQ. It meant nothing to him, but if DQ was finished and released, Cloutier could leverage this old documentary into some revenue.

That's plausible. And my head is hurting at this stage, trying to follow it all!

[mido505]

Just a couple of quick points:

Your Cloutier quotations are fascinating - where did you get them from? The Rosabella documentary?

One is from ROSABELLA, which I have not seen; the other is from a documentary about OTHELLO. The Tonti quotation is also from ROSABELLA. They were posted by Wellesnetter Tony years ago, on this thread. I've been combing through things in order to refresh my memory.

It is possible that the three-way offer of completion funds for DQ happened as early as 1972-4.

I think not. We would have heard things from other sources, and, more importantly, Cloutier says specifically that it happened "after the collapse of the Iranian thing", i.e., TOSOTW. She goes on to note "And then I managed to raise a million dollars from the Spanish government", so the Spanish financing came after the "collapse". I'd date the complete collapse of TOSOTW to 1979-1980, after the revolution really screwed things up, so I think an early 80's date is the most likely. I just remembered that Welles referenced the DQ/essay film re-conception in the 1980 Leslie Megahey interview, so it was certainly on his mind at that time.

There is also this very strange quotation from Juan Cobos:

In the 1980´s—Welles died in 1985—he returned to Los Angeles with a work print of his Cervantes’ adventure, to do more work on it by inventing a new structure in the editing that he hoped would enable him to show it to the world so it wouldn’t be considered a film maudit. However, he couldn’t put his new version into effect, because, among other reasons, the French Government had just promised him a studio and enough financing to make King Lear in Paris, but later demanded compromises that caused the project to languish and finally disappear.

Once again we have Welles taking the work print of DQ back to LA in the early 80's, in order to create a "new structure". But then Cobos veers off, oddly, to KING LEAR and Paris (again!), and seemingly blames the collapse of the DQ project on the collapse of LEAR.

Were the projects tied together? Welles had done that previously with FALSTAFF and TREASURE ISLAND, in order to get the former financed. Cloutier did say that "three governments" were involved in the project. It is reported in ORSON WELLES AT WORK that LEAR was to have been financed by "the French television channel TF1 [and] two other European television companies", so that's three. When that project collapsed due to French intransigence, did Spain come back on board for just DQ? One wonders if the deal Oja made with the Spanish government in 1992 was just a revival of a deal originally negotiated ten years earlier.

As you say, this is no proof that Rosalba Tonti took the workprint to Paris, it's proof that some material held by Bonanni went to Paris. It's fascinating proof that such material was sent, but it's not inconsistent with Mauro Bonanni also having met Beatrice in 1971 to hand over the workprint. "Two suitcases" could be anything - rushes, assembled footage, a duped workprint, etc.

Yes, two suitcases could be anything, but we have this from Bonanni, which is why I found that detail telling:

One day he said, “Tomorrow I present my son.” I thought to myself, I know that Welles has a daughter, so I knew that was wrong. Well, you know that his suitcases were listed as immigrants when they went to the North? The day after, Welles came with these two suitcases which, using cardboard and some cheap leather, he kept shut with string. Inside were all the boxes which contained Don Quixote. So we started working on it.

I'm telling you, Tonti had the work print from Bonanni, and took it to Welles in Paris after he left Rome. Beatrice is telling the truth.