Don Quixote de Orson Welles

The footage in this film was directed by Orson Welles for a dream production of Miguel de Cervantes' landmark novel, a project that he filmed on and off for 15 years with Francisco Reiguera (strikingly gaunt and theatrically animated) and Akim Tamiroff as Quixote and Sancho Panza, respectively, in the modern world. This isn't a restoration -- Welles never completed the film -- and it's not really a reconstruction of what might have been; it's more a compendium of recovered footage edited into a rough narrative by cult director Jess Franco, who assisted Welles on the production. The footage varies wildly in quality from shot to shot, the awkward, indifferent editing only draws attention to the weakness, and Franco piles in footage that Welles never intended to use in the film. But the real crime against art is the slapdash narration and dubbing and the distracting and sloppy visual effects that Franco adds to the film. It works better as a flawed historical document than a movie, because it sure doesn't look, sound or feel like a film by Welles.