Daily Archives: February 9, 2023

The best scene from Orson Welles’s DON QUIXOTE & “The Most Beautiful Six Minutes in the History of Cinema”(2 Chicago Reader blog posts, 2007)

The best scene from Orson Welles’s Don Quixote

Posted By on 10.14.07 at 07:37 PM

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I hope I can be forgiven for promoting a piece of my own promotion. It seems worth doing in this case  because an hour-long interview with me by Mara Tapp about my latest book, Discovering Orson Welles, taped for CAN TV19 and showing on Sunday, October 21, at 5 PM and then again on Monday, October 22, at noon, entitled “Unseen Orson Welles,” includes a silent, five-minute sequence from Orson Welles’ unfinished Don Quixote that is arguably the greatest sequence he shot for the film, even though it can’t be found in the execrable version cobbled together by Jesus Franco in 1992. It was shot in the mid-1950s in Mexico City, during the postproduction of Touch of Evil.  It’s set in a movie theater, features child actress Patty McCormack as herself, Francesco Riguera (see photo) as Quixote, and Akim Tamiroff (perhaps Welles’s favorite character actor, who also appears in Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil, and The Trial) as Sancho Panza, and is fully edited by Welles.

“The Most Beautiful Six Minutes in the History of Cinema”

Posted By on 10.18.07 at 11:58 PM

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.”

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GOODBYE, NORMA JEAN (1976 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin , September 1976, vol. 43, no. 512. — J.R.

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Goodbye, Norma Jean

U. S.A./Australia, 1975                                          

Director: Larry Buchanan

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Hollywood, 1941. Ogled by her foster father and despised by her foster mother, Norma Jean Baker is thrown out by the latter and takes work in a factory. Raped by a policeman whom she earlier persuaded not to give her a speeding ticket, she is comforted by Corporal Ralph Johnson. He prompts her on how to behave when she enters the Miss Whammo-Ammo contest (which she wins), photographs her in cheesecake poses, and advises her in her efforts to become a movie star. They drive to Tijuana and make love, although she admits that her former experiences with men have prevented her from enjoying sex. He next introduces her to model agent Beverly, who finds her work posing for pulp magazine illustrations and introduces her in turn to agent Irving Ollbach, who takes her to a party in Palm Springs. There she is sneered at by casting director Ruth Latimer, raped by actor Randy Palmer (who first offers to give her a screen test), and mocked by the party’s host, the wealthy Hal James, who none the less later arranges for her to have an interview at Lion-Rampant pictures. Read more