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Thanks to Reader webmaster Whet Moser, here’s a scene from Welles’s Don Quixote, preceded by a few comments from me from an upcoming interview, “Unseen Orson Welles.” As I mention in the last chapter of my book, contrary to the claim of some Italian critics that this sequence is derived from the attack on several windmills in Part 1, Chapter 8 of the Cervantes novel, I think it can be traced more plausibly back to Quixote’s attack on a puppet theater in Part 2, Chapter 26—although, as with other scenes in Welles’s film, it’s a very free adaptation. Meanwhile, the Australian film critic Adrian Martin has kindly sent me a short text (pasted below this sequence) by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, a provocative reading of both this scene and the novel. (I’ve just recalled that the girl in the film is named Dulcie, supporting Agamben’s assumption about her identity.)
The Most Beautiful Six Minutes in the History of Cinema
