CINEMATOGRAPHIC TRANSPOSITION OF CERVANTES’S CODE IN DON QUIXOTE BY ORSON WELLES

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the problem of transposition of the Cervantes’s Code in the cinematographic adaptation of the novel Don Quixote by Orson Welles (1957-1992). The study focuses on identifying and revealing the aesthetic and ideological kinship of the film adaptation of the American director with the work of the Spanish writer, as well as on the analysis of methods and mechanisms of actualization of the main thematic, problematic, structural and narrative aspects of the novel of Cervantes at various levels of the Welles’s cinematic poetics. Welles retains the "intellectual" skepticism of Cervantes, but demostrates a greater affinity with the romantic tradition of reading this text, which at his time dominated the cinematic and scientific-critical discourse. The actualization of the anachronism of Don Quixote as one of the key thematic codes of Cervantes's novel is carried out by transferring the action of the novel to the Francoist Spain. The structure of the film reproduces the plot mostly on the basis of the first volume. Working in the "manner of Cervantes", the author of the cinematic adaptation uses a wide range of ludic, metatextual and metanarrative techniques that reveal the "auto-reflexivity" of his text. In addition, Welles' adaptation of Don Quixote transposes the linguistic and stylistic codes of the Spanish author's novel by using the cinematic montage techniques, oblique angle shots, and stylized mise-en-scène (in-depth). Those features, in turn, demonstrate the inherent kinship with the baroque style of the second volume. Welles stresses the ambivalence inherent in Cervantes's text: he criticizes modernity, but uses its achievements (especially the cinema) to implement his own utopian cultural program of the new knight of cinema. Welles's film chosen as the object of our study essentially and aesthetically remains "faithful" to the original and at the same time contributes to a deeper understanding of the Cervantes’s code in the modern media space and culture in particular. The film reveals the ability of Cervantes's code to adapt to modern communication technologies and changes in life (cinema, advertising, tourism) that not only present Don Quixote and Sancho Panza as anachronisms, but also ensure their immortality, proving the validity of Welles's idea who states that they are heroes for all ages.