Orson Welles is cinema's greatest maverick. A prodigy of the acclaimed Federal Theatre Project, he waltzed into Hollywood at the tender age of twenty-five to create Citizen Kane, a film that was immediately heralded as one of the all-time greats. While its success should have signaled the start of a long and fruitful career in the industry, Welles’s outsider sensibilities clashed with the unflinching structure of the major film studios, resulting in many of his films being re-edited or just outright cancelled. It’s a testament to his skills that, even in their truncated forms, films such as The Magnificent Ambersons or Touch of Evil still received widespread acclaim, but it's impossible not to wonder how they would have turned out had Welles been allowed to realize his vision unobstructed. It’s a question that leads directly into one of the overarching debates of his career – how much creative control should a filmmaker be given? Welles is unquestionably a genius, and his masterful use of cinematography and editing have cemented him as one of the greatest minds to ever grace Hollywood, but his habit of running over budget in pursuit of his own egotistical goals led to many projects that resembled a mess of conflicting ideas rather than a cohesive vision. Uncontrolled genius can lead to masterworks, but it can also create disasters that even the greatest editors would fail to build a coherent product from, and nowhere is that more evident than his most infamous unmade project, Don Quixote.

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don quixote
Image via Orson Welles

An adaptation of the classic Miguel de Cervantes novel, Welles originally developed the film as a thirty-minute short for CBS 1955, but the negative response to his preliminary test footage convinced him to expand it into a far grander project. Rather than being a direct adaptation, Welles intended to bring its central duo of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza into the modern world, analyzing how the themes of the 400-year-old novel continue to resonate. Filming began in 1957, but issues with financing and the improvisational nature of the project meant it only wrapped twelve years later in 1969. Even after this second-unit filming was still being done well into the 1970s, with post-production continuing all the way to 1985 when Welles’s unfortunate death brought the film to a swift end. In the years since snippets of footage have occasionally escaped the depths of speculation to provide a glimpse at what could have been (most notably a 1992 version by Jesús Franco that attempted to complete the project), but its constantly changing nature combined with Welles’s unorthodox style means a truly finished version is unlikely to appear. If such a thing would even be possible, that is. Don Quixote is the most notorious of Welles’s unmade films for good reason, a disfunction mess of an idea where it’s probable even its esteemed creator didn’t know what direction to take with it. While there’s no debate that artists must have creative freedom when creating their work, Don Quixote remains an excellent example of why unlimited control can ultimately do more harm than good.

The central reason why a finished version of Don Quixote failed to materialize stems entirely from Welles’s unflinching commitment to his own style, even though that style was little more than a collection of loosely connected ideas that made sense only to him. Principal photography began in June 1957 with Francisco Reiguera and Akim Tamiroff in the roles of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, respectively, but the uncertain nature of the final product resulted in Welles working without a finished script. Scenes were improvised, with the film’s constant state of flux leaving everyone unsure what material would make it into the end result. Issues with funding and Welles’s commitment to other projects led to large periods of downtime between filming, with Welles eventually opting to fund the entire film himself. This proved easier said than done, with Welles being forced to accept many acting and directing jobs well below his caliber just to keep production afloat, only exacerbating the prolonged filming schedule. To make matters worse, the film was shot with silent 16 mm cameras, with Welles intending to dub the dialogue later. While this would afford Welles greater freedom when shaping his product in the editing suite, it only served as another layer of the film’s already chaotic production.

Don-Quixote movie image
Image via Orson Welles

Whether Welles wanted to or not, principal photography finally ended in 1969 due to the failing health of Reiguera (who tragically died the same year). While he was able to complete production prior to Reiguera’s passing, Welles would continue to experiment with additional filming. As the years dragged on and still no finished version materialized, the project drifted into the mystical land of myths and legends as speculation that it would never be completed began to appear. Despite this, Welles never abandoned the film, referring to it as “my own personal project, to be completed in my own time”. As one decade gave way to the next, Welles began toying with the idea of transforming it into a docudrama akin to his 1973 film F for Fake. It was intended to become an examination into a post-Francisco Franco Spain following his death in 1975, with Welles using the leading characters from the nation’s greatest novel as the vectors with which to explore this brave new world, but this version of Don Quixote also failed to appear.

Welles’s death in 1985 proved to be the final nail for the project. The film still lacked anything resembling a completed form, with the surviving footage split between multiple different parties. The difficulty with gathering all the material together, combined with the film’s lack of script and silent footage (only some of which Welles has completed dubbing for), meant any attempt to complete the project would be the equivalent of recreating War and Peace based only on a vague description of the plot. The most notable attempt came in 1992 by Jesús Franco (who had previously worked as the second unit director on Welles’s Chimes at Midnight), who was able to cobble together a two-hour version based on the scraps of footage he was able to obtain the rights to (largely the footage owned by Oja Kodar, Welles’s partner during his later years). To watch the film feels like reading the first draft of a novel before its creator has figured out what the ultimate goal of the book is, except it’s also a draft where all the pages have been placed in an entirely random order (the result of Welles purposefully mislabeling Don Quixote’s reels of film so only he would know their true order). While it does contain enjoyable moments, the film feels like nothing more than a collection of disconnected scenes, making it hard to enjoy beyond imagining what could have been. The inclusion of a windmill scene is the film’s most egregious decision. Despite being the novel’s most iconic set piece, Welles had deliberately avoided filming a recreation of it, with Franco’s creation of one through a clever use of editing and stock footage encapsulating the film’s problem. The footage may well have been shot by Orson Welles, but an Orson Welles film it is most certainly not.

The failure of Welles to finish Don Quixote, despite working on it for a total of thirty years, sparks an interesting debate about the creation of art. Should an artist be given total freedom when creating their work, or are barriers a necessary evil that all creators should learn to accept? As with all such debates, the answer lies somewhere in between. Art has always existed at the uncomfortable crossroads between creativity and consumerism, with artists having to balance their own creative ambitions while still making a product that will pay the bills. Film in particular has always prided itself as being the workingman’s art form, with its cheap price and ease of access making it more accessible than other mediums. While cinema has gone through fazes of championing the director above all else (most notably the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s), studios have always fallen back on the basic desire to make money. This was especially true during the Golden Age of Hollywood, when films were tightly controlled regimes and producers held all the power. While directors like John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock were able to balance their own artistic pursuits while still creating a saleable product, Orson Welles never fitted comfortably into this world. His desire to experiment with the medium caused productions to run over schedule and over budget, and all for an end product that wasn’t commercial. Many of his films were re-edited against his will, and while it’s impressive that films like The Magnificent Ambersons are still considered classics even in their fractured state, it’s impossible not to wonder how much better they would have been had he been left to his own devices. It’s also possible to look at this from a different perspective, however, with these edits salvaging what could have otherwise been chaotic films by stripping away the self-absorbed experimentation to focus solely on his genuine talents as a filmmaker. But this is just baseless speculation, and the reshot ending to The Magnificent Ambersons highlights a studio that cares less about artistry and more about getting as many bums on seats as possible.

don quixote orson welles movie image
Image via Orson Welles

But Don Quixote was different. Unlike his previous films Welles was funding everything himself, and with no incentive to make anything but a quality film he was free to tinker with it for however long he wanted. While this no doubt made Welles very happy, his inability to finish a two-hour film despite thirty years of work speaks volumes about the dangers of unlimited freedom. The overwhelming majority of great art is made with some degree of restrictions in place, and it’s from these constraints the best creativity shines. Give someone a blank piece of paper and tell them to write a story and they’ll probably find the whole task too daunting to complete, but try again with a strict set of guidelines for them to follow and watch as the creative juices flow. Orson Welles clearly had no shortage of ideas, but the lack of any parameters or a clearly defined goal for his film meant Don Quixote was destined never to be finished.

But that’s okay. One of an artist's greatest rights is their right to leave a project unfinished. Even when considering Welles’s habit of changing concepts on the fly, none of his other projects had a production cycle that stretched on for so long, giving credence to the idea that the only reason why Don Quixote remains unfinished is because that’s exactly what Welles wanted. Perhaps he realized the film had grown too unwieldy and that his time would be better spent on more viable projects, or it was merely his own pet project that was never meant for public consumption. Whatever the reason, Don Quixote has cemented itself as one of the great unmade films, although its fragmented nature makes any kind of revival similar to The Other Side of the Wind (another unmade Welles film) unlikely. Don Quixote may be a lost masterpiece, but it may also have been a disaster of a film we should be thankful we were spared from, and whatever the answer we will probably never know. But its unfinishable nature remains a potent warning against total freedom when creating art, especially from egotistical filmmakers who struck gold with their first film. In theory it sounds like every artists dream, but in reality it can be the very worst thing to get.