Don Quixote (unfinished Film) - Production

Production

On 29 June 1957, after having been removed from his own film Touch of Evil, Welles headed to Mexico City to begin work on the feature-length version of Don Quixote. The part of Don Quixote had been offered to Charlton Heston, who had just finished filming Touch of Evil with Welles, and Heston was keen on playing the role, but was only available for two weeks, which Welles feared would be insufficient. Spanish actor Francisco Reiguera was cast as Don Quixote and Akim Tamiroff remained as Sancho Panza. Welles also brought in child actress Patty McCormack to play Dulcie, an American girl visiting Mexico City as the city's central framing device. During her visit, Dulcie would encounter Welles (playing himself) in a hotel lobbby, on the hotel patio and in a horse-drawn carriage, and he would tell her the story of Don Quixote. She would then meet Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the present day, and would later tell Welles of her adventures with them.

Welles worked without a finished script, shooting improvised sequences on the street. Much of the footage was shot with silent 16mm equipment, with Welles planning to dub the dialogue at a later date. As the production evolved, Welles told film critic André Bazin that he saw his Don Quixote being created in the improvisational style of silent comedy films. The bulk of filming occurred in Mexico in two blocks in late 1957. The first was between early July 1957 and his return to Hollywood on 28 August, while the second was in September and October 1957. Filming in Mexico occurred in Puebla, Tepozlan, Texcoco and Rio Frio.

However, Welles’ production was forced to stop due to problems with financing. At this stage the project was supervised by Mexican producer Oscar Dancigers, and after Welles went over budget by some $5,000, Dancigers suspended filming, before pulling out of the project entirely. Thereafter, Welles produced the film himself. Welles became preoccupied with other projects, including attempts to salvage Touch of Evil. In a bid to raise more funds, Welles threw himself into money-making assignments, acting in films including The Long, Hot Summer, Compulsion and Ferry to Hong Kong, narrating films including The Vikings and King of Kings, and directing the stage plays Five Kings and Rhinoceros When money was available, he switched the location shooting to Spain. As time went by, McCormack matured out of childhood, forcing Welles to drop her character from the film. In later years, he stated that he wished to re-film her scenes, plus some new ones, with his daughter Beatrice Welles (who had a small part in his Chimes at Midnight). However, he never did so, and by the late 1960s Beatrice also grew out of childhood.

During the 1960s, Welles shot fragments of Don Quixote in Spain (Pamplona, Málaga and Seville) and Italy (Rome, Manziana and Civitavecchia) as his schedule and finances allowed; he even found time to film sequences (reported as being "the prologue and epilogue") while on vacation in Málaga commuting all the while to Paris to oversee the post-production work on his 1962 adaptation of The Trial. Welles continued to show Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the present day, where they react with bafflement at such inventions as motor scooters, airplanes, automobiles, radio, television, cinema screens and missiles. Welles never filmed a literal version of the famous scene in which Quixote duels with windmills, he instead made a modern-day version of it in which Quixote walks into a cinema. Sancho Panza and Patty McCormack's character are sat in the audience, watching the screen in silent amazement. A battle scene plays onscreen, and Quixote mistakes this for the real thing, trying to do battle with the screen and tearing it to pieces with his sword.

The production became so prolonged that Reiguera, who was seriously ailing by the end of the 1960s, asked Welles to finish shooting his scenes before his health gave out. Welles was able to complete the scenes involving Reiguera prior to the actor’s death in 1969. However, as Welles shot most of the footage silently, he seldom filmed the original actors' dialogue. He intended to dub the voices himself (as he did on many of his films, including Macbeth, Othello, The Trial and The Deep), combining his narration with his voicing all the characters, but only ever did so for some limited portions of the film.

The financial struggles of Don Quixote are mentioned in the film Ed Wood (1994).