Orson Welles' ‘Don Quixote' Might Finally Get Definitive Cut

Orson Welles, who died in 1985, had several unfinished films, including “Don Quixote.” There is an update on that film, and it’s a positive one. Welles’ vision might finally, maybe, be coming to the big screen.

Footage of the unfinished film, housed in U.S. and European archives, is now being catalogued in anticipation of a potential assembly and restoration cut. The project still needs to win the approval of Oja Kodar, the film’s rights holder, but things seem to finally be moving.

‘Don Quixote’ was based on Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century novel. Francisco Reiguera was cast in the title role as Quixote, an old man who believes he is a knight. Welles narrated the film, and played himself in a few scenes.

An embarrassing version of the film was unveiled in 1992, and edited by director Jesús Franco. Spanish film critic Juan Cobos had seen a rough cut of Welles’ unfinished footage (which he praised highly), and stated that Franco’s edit bore little resemblance to it. Similarly, critic/historian Jonathan Rosenbaum described the 45 minutes of footage assembled in 1986 as being vastly superior to the Franco edit.

Welles’ ‘Quixote’ was a self-financed personal project that Welles would return to over the course of his life. He set no deadline to complete it. Welles described it in 1981 as “a private exercise of mine, and it will be finished as an author would finish it — in my own good time, when I feel like it.” He amusingly added, “And when it is released, its title is going to be When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?”

Meanwhile, we still have no update on Joshua Grossberg’s obsessive search for the lost cut of Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons.” Last we heard, Grossberg and his team were searching through the vast landscapes of Brazil, for months, to find a copy of the lost footage of Welles’ lost masterpiece.

Throughout his career, Welles worked on numerous unfinished films, most of which he abandoned due to legal issues, lack of funds, or loss of interest and which were never finished or released. One of those films, “The Other Side of the Wind,” was completed and released on Netflix in 2018, to strong reviews.