“Perhaps the most fascinating component of the films directed by Orson Welles was the masterpiece he never lived to complete. Beginning in 1957 and continuing on-and-off for the next 15 years, Welles self-financed and directed an audacious film version of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" which brought the legendary knight and his rotund aide Sancho Panza out of 16th century Andalusia and into the world of (then-) modern Spain. But despite his genius behind the camera, Welles was remarkably neglectful in maintaining and preserving the footage he created and much of his work was considered lost...and the footage that remained was not properly stored! However, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the Spanish filmmakers Jess Franco (who served as Welles' second unit director on Chimes at Midnight) and Patxi Irigoyen tracked down nearly all of the surviving footage, finished the incomplete soundtrack based on Welles' notes, restored the footage where they could and offered a reconstructed Don Quixote de Orson Welles in 1992...” – Phil Hall, Filmthreat.com

This is the Preview version of Touch of Evil found in the mid 1970s. This version is 15-minutes longer than the theatrical version that eventually made it to theaters in 1958. The longer preview version was for many years presumed to be Orson Welles' preferred cut. When Welles saw the preview version, he wrote his famous 58-page memo, a pitiful attempt to undo the damage.

The last completed essay film of Orson Welles, and the last of his features to be released during his lifetime (1979), this wonderfully candid, rarely screened account of the making of his first wholly independent feature offers a perfect introduction to that movie and to Welles’s “second” manner of moviemaking that was necessary once he parted company with the studios and mainstream media. Significantly, the only part of Othello we see and hear in its original form is from the opening sequence; everything else--usually shown silently with Welles’s narration--involves an intricate reediting of the original material. Whether he’s addressing us beside his moviola, delivering new versions of Shakespearean speeches, chatting with his old Irish friends and collaborators Micheal MacLiammoir (his Iago) and Hilton Edwards, or speaking to college students, Welles is at his spellbinding best.