Reconstructing Orson Welles’s Unfinished ‘Quixote’: A Collaborative Archival Project

Filmmakers often view their craft as technologically outdated, a perspective Orson Welles articulated in a 1985 interview recorded by ‘Arte TV’ (source in Spanish) months before his death. Alonso Quijano’s disdain for obsolete chivalry in Renaissance Spain may have resonated with Welles, inspiring him to adapt Cervantes’ classic.

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Nearly four decades later, a project led by the Spanish Film Archive in collaboration with the French Cinematheque, Italy’s National Film Library, and Munich’s Film Museum aims to gather fragmented materials across four countries to reconstruct Welles’s unfulfilled ambition: a 1957 shoot in Mexico that spanned three decades without a final version.

“This isn’t a restoration,” clarifies Esteve Riambau, a Welles historian and former director of the Catalan Film Archive. “We’re reconstructing a film whose concept and elements evolved—additions and deletions occurred throughout. It’s still uncertain if we have all the pieces or what remains missing,” he notes in a call from Bologna, where he presented the project alongside Spanish Film Archive director Valeria Camporesi at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival.

Riambau aims to approximate Welles’s original vision, shaped by his Midwestern upbringing and later life. “It’s not a documentary but a cultural presentation, not intended for commercial release,” he emphasizes.

Riambau references Jesús Franco’s 1992 attempt using 40,000 meters of footage for Seville’s Universal Exposition, ‘Don Quijote de Orson Welles.’

“Franco’s version was disappointing. He combined material with an RAI documentary and inserted his own images as originals,” Riambau explains. The Spanish dubbing also falters, with actors reciting Cervantes’ text out of sync.

Technically, this marks the Spanish Film Archive’s second involvement. Franco’s work was overseen by José María Prado, the archive’s head from 1989 to 2016, a former San Sebastián Film Festival selector and husband of actress Marisa Paredes.

Between 2026 and 2027, institutions will digitize 70,000 meters of film and analyze 2,000-page original script. Riambau insists on human-led reconstruction, rejecting AI involvement.

From Wisconsin to El Toboso: Did Welles Truly Seek Completion?

The director of ‘Citizen Kane’—a film conceived by Herman Mankiewicz after a car accident that impaired his mobility—reimagined classics like Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ and multiple Shakespeares. In 1957, Welles began adapting Don Quixote, a project seemingly doomed to incompletion, as seen in Terry Gilliam’s recent ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ (2018), which required eight failed attempts.

Yet Welles’s effort dwarfed Gilliam’s. His Don Quixote vision evolved over decades, never finalized.

Welles initially filmed a documentary series on Spain during Francoism to gain RAI approval, hiding his project in a land where the novel originated. Shooting locations included Santa María de la Huerta, Calatañazor, Pedraza, Brihuega, and Valladolid. When asked where he’d live in Spain, he chose Ávila: “The climate is terrible—scorching summers, freezing winters. It’s a strange, tragic place. I feel a connection there.”

Riambau notes Welles’s passion for Spain influenced the project’s revival. Oja Kodar, his artistic partner since the 1960s, persuaded him to transfer footage to Madrid. Kodar retrieved 50,000 meters of negatives in 2017, digitized by Italy’s National Film Library. Remaining material is split among archives, including 80 minutes of 35mm positives from the Cinematheque and scattered prints, negatives, and documents from the Film Museum.

From 1966, when the main shoot ended, until his death, Welles repeatedly altered his plans, reportedly unsatisfied. Jesús Franco claimed Welles “wanted the project to remain his unresolved dream.”

The endeavor straddles reality and metafiction, fitting for a novel about a deluded chivalric hero—a metaphor for artistic obsession, inapplyable to Pedro Almodóvar’s style.

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