An atrocious offense to the memory and genius of Welles, this senseless assemblage of self-indulgent improvisation on a grand theme should have been locked up in storage along with a number of other unfinished Welles' projects no one has ever seen. Now we know why! To add additional insult to prior injury, the appalling English language dubbing by amateur America dubbing actors and even the great man himself only heightens all the sloppy mistakes in story-telling and construction. It's as if every weekend some good hearted Spanish soul gave Orson a few pesos, a 35mm camera and some short-ends of negative film left over from some other production and told Welles to drive out to the Spanish countryside and just keeping shooting anything and everything until the film stock ran out. It's true that if Orson had really shaped this film himself instead the notorious Jesus Franco, he might have thrown out 85% of what he shot, but we will never know. As Welles never took the time to edit his own work here, and somewhere along the way he or his heirs sanctioned someone else to do so, he is not entirely blameless for the debacle. Those who wish to prove that in his early days Welles was the luckiest of young men because he surrounded himself with the likes of John Houseman, Herman Mankewiecz, Greg Toland, Bernard Hermann and Robert Wise need no better proof of his adult inadequacies than this mess of a film. In his sad old age Welles was capable of doing anything when he needed a few bucks or pesos, including selling his artistic soul. The devil certainly got his due with this one!
Review of Don Quixote
