Don Quichotte
Time Out says
Along with an English-language doppelgänger, shot concurrently, this has long been a hard film to find, so we should be grateful for even an abridged, disjointed version (all that remains?). The film's commercial wash-out is easy to understand. This is a bleak, comfortless adaptation, emphasising madness (Chaliapin is grotesque, though not inappositely so), failure and death. But as an evocation of period (sets by Andrejew) and of sun-baked Iberian languor, it shows how stylish a film-maker Pabst could be. The ending is pure despair: Quixote dead, the police burning his books, and long, long slow-motion shots (reprised by Truffaut in Fahrenheit 451) of pages curling up in agony, accompanied by Ibert's vigorous score. (Students of the composer's work will be best placed to identify such songs as have been excised in this copy.) BBa.
Details
Release details
Duration:
63 mins
Cast and crew
Director:
Georg-Wilhelm Pabst
Screenwriter:
Paul Morand, Jean de Limur Alexandre Arnoux
Cast:
Fedor Chaliapin
Dorville
Renée Vallier
Mireille Balin
Mady Berry
Jean de Limur
Vladimir Sokoloff
Dorville
Renée Vallier
Mireille Balin
Mady Berry
Jean de Limur
Vladimir Sokoloff