Don Quichotte (1933, version française)

G. W. Pabst: Don Quichotte (FR/GB 1933) avec Chaliapine (Don Quichotte) and Dorville (Sancho Panza).

G. W. Pabst: Don Quichotte (FR/GB 1933). The final image. From the bonfire in which the ingenious hidalgo's library is burning emerges like a Phoenix the front page of the book about his own story. My screenshot from YouTube. 

Titre original : Don Quichotte / Titre anglais : Don Quixote / The Adventures of Don Quixote (English title in Finland) / Don Quijote (Finnish title)

    FR/GB 1933. Une production de Vandor-Nelson Film, Paris. PC: Vandor-Film (Paris), Nelson (London). P: G. W. Pabst. Directeur de la production : Constantin Geftman.

    Réalisateur : G. W. Pabst, assisté par Jean de Limur (V.O.) et John Farrow (V.A.). Scénariste : G. W. Pabst et Paul Morand d'après El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, segunda parte 1615) de Cervantes. Dialogues : Alexandre Arnoux. Photographie : Nicolas Farkas - noir et blanc.  Pellicule Kodak. Tirage G. M. Film. English version: Paul Portier.  AD: Andrej Andrejew. Costumes d'après les maquettes : Max Pretzfelder.  Exécution de costumes : Maison Karinsky. Ombres chinoises : Lotte Reiniger. Musique originale : Jacques Ibert. S: J. Dell. Camion d'enregistrement "Braunberger-Richebé". System Western-Electric. Montage : Jean Oser. Assistant: Herbert Rappaport.

    Distribution: Version française

Fédor Chaliapine : Don Quichotte

Dorville : Sancho Panza

Mady Berry : Femme de Sancho

Renée Valliers : Dulcinée

Mireille Balin : la nièce de Don Quichotte

René Donnio : Carrasco

Jean de Limur : le duc

Arlette Marchal : la duchesse

Génica Athanasiou : la servante d'auberge (comme Génica Anet)

Vladimir Sokoloff : le roi des Gitans

Charles Martinelli : Chef de Police

Charles Léger : Le Curé

Léon Larive : l'aubergiste

Pierre Labry : 2me aubergiste

Mafer : Le Roi

    Version anglaise

Feodor Chaliapin : Don Quixote

George Robey : Sancho Panza

René Donnio : Carrasco (comme Donnio)

Renée Valliers : Dulcinea

Emily Fitzroy : la femme de Sancho Panza

Sidney Fox : Maria, la nièce du duc

Miles Mander : le duc de Fallanga

Wally Patch : le roi des Gitans

Oscar Asche : le chef des gendarmes

Lydia Sherwood : la duchesse de Fallanga

Frank Stanmore : le prêtre

    82 min

    Three original language versions: French, English and German.

    Pays du tournage : France. Loc: Nice. Studios G.F.F.A. Nice.

    Genre : Drame

    Dates de sortie : Belgique : 16 mars 1933 - France : 7 avril 1933

    Helsinki premiere : 3 Nov 1935 Royal - released by Kosmos-Filmi Oy at 2280 m

    A 82 min French version (Le Comptoir Français Cinématographique) with Spanish subtitles viewed on YouTube at home in Helsinki, 4 Nov 2025

G. W. Pabst directed three language versions: 

Don Quichotte in French (82 min)

Don Quixote in English (80 min and 73 min)

Don Quijote in German (120 min). This version is missing. The year was 1933, and the film was not released in Hitler's Germany. In Austria, the French version was released on 2 Feb 1934.

AA: 

Habent sua fata libelli - books have their destinies (Terentianus).

G. W. Pabst's Don Quichotte is both based on a novel and about the novel. It is a meta-film about a meta-novel, the novel from which a direct lineage exists to the self-awareness and intertextuality of the modern novel.

The film starts from the moving pages of the original edition of Cervantes's novel. Via the magic of Lotte Reiniger's Chinese shadows, silhouette figures emerge from the pages and come to life in the incarnations of Chaliapin as Don Quixote and Dorville as Sancho Panza.

Pabst's adaptation is highly condensed but full of energy and panache. This is not a stately homage, nor made with a Classics Illustrated approach, fast-forwarding through "highlights from Don Quixote". This is a character-driven interpretation with a great cast in profoundly moving performances.

Don Quijote has inspired many great artists from Daumier to Picasso to memorable visual art, but perhaps all plays are doomed to fail in their attempt to do justice to Cervantes. Don Quijote, which I only know in the Finnish translation of J. A. Hollo, is great literature, and the joy of language is of the essence. 

Don Quijote is a celebration of the power of language and a revelation about the curse of language to lead us astray and lead to madness. A perfectly topical subject in the world of today. A performance of Don Quijote tends to emphasize the superficial action (battles with wineskins, sheep flocks and windmills) which is funny in its own right but of secondary importance in the last instance.

In the transition from silent cinema to sound, Pabst reinvented himself in many ways: as a director of triple sound versions, and boldly integrating music and song in his storytelling, most prominently in Die 3-Groschen-Oper. Having cast Chaliapin, he takes full advantage of the talent of the legendary singer, turns his adaptation into a musical and commissions a rousing score from Jacques Ibert who also composed the theme song. This is an inspired solution to a story in which the protagonist is the playwright of his own legend.

Pabst was a great director of women, and he preferred female parts with agency, but not so much here. Mady Berry is impressive as the wife of Sancho, but the character of Dulcinea is disappointing and does not give Renée Valliers much to do. Dulcinea the lady love is an illusion, a bit like Madeleine in Vertigo. Pabst would have been the perfect director to convey the comedy and tragedy of loving a dream image, but this time the opportunity is missed.

The Renaissance ambience of Cervantes is genial, conveyed in lavish detail. The vitality of the sun-drenched world of 17th century Spain has been reconstructed in Nice. The next time Pabst covered the Renaissance in Paracelsus, a portrait of the friend of Erasmus and the model of Faust, a mythical figure comparable with Don Quixote.

In the finale the knight-errant is caught by the authorities in a cage and transported back to his home village in La Mancha. There huge volumes of his expensive library are consigned to a bonfire. The vision shocks Don Quijote and he dies of heartbreak. 

The film had been shot in 1932. Its premiere took place a week after the first book burnings of the Nazi administration in Germany (7 and 8 March, 1933).

The camera remains in a long close-up of the burning pages. Like a phoenix, from the conflagration emerges the title page of Don Quijote.

...

Sinopsis (Wikipedia)

La película comienza con el gran héroe español Don Quijote de la Mancha, que lee con entusiasmo libros sobre los buenos viejos tiempos de la caballería y, como resultado, decide emprender sus propias aventuras como noble caballero. A su lado está su fiel servidor Sancho Panza, a quien promete tesoros incalculables, y que luego se convierte en su escudero. Don Quijote le pide a un comediante ambulante que participa en una representación teatral en una venta que lo nombre caballero. Don Quijote ve al malabarista como el noble caballero literario Amadís de Gaula y no se da cuenta de que al actor, pronto le resulta divertido presentar al flaco caballero como un viejo tonto a su divertida audiencia teatral. La gente común de la taberna se divierte mucho cuando Don Quijote se expone al ridículo con su actitud caballeresca. No se hace más creíble el hombre que acaba de hacerse caballero cuando declara también como su reina de corazones a una simple doncella de esta venta y, la llama Dulcinea del Toboso.

Junto a Sancho Panza, sale a cabalgar, hacia sus aventuras en su caballo Rocinante. El objetivo de sus acciones es eliminar las injusticias de este mundo y desafiar a los malvados. Un día, Don Quijote acepta la invitación del duque de la provincia, y se aloja en su casa. Para hacer que Don Quijote entre en razón y sacarlo de sus casillas, la sobrina del duque le pide a su tío que desafíe a Don Quijote a un duelo, en un torneo de caballeros para derrotarlo. Cuando Don Quijote se entera de que lo están engañando, se enfada y se marcha altivo. Luego, finalmente encontró oponentes "dignos": a veces es un rebaño de ovejas, a veces molinos de viento, que le parecen un ejército de gigantes malvados. La aspa de un molino de viento eleva a Don Quijote tan alto en el aire que tiene que intervenir la autoridad para liberar al caballero de la triste forma de su situación. En el proceso, Don Quijote resulta gravemente herido.

Ya basta, piensan los bien intencionados, y traen de vuelta a su casa al anciano, enfermo física y psíquicamente. En la marcha, a través de los vecinos de su pueblo natal, se expone al ridículo de su comunidad natal en una jaula. En su casa, se destruyen sus sueños con el incendio de su biblioteca. Profundamente conmocionado, Don Quijote muere. Después de todo, el último libro también fue víctima de las llamas. Pero este último libro, que cuenta su propia historia, resurge como un ave fénix de las cenizas y vuelve a la vida. Acaba de nacer la leyenda de Don Quijote, el noble caballero.