Cinema, literature and myth: Don Quijote in cinema, beyond the adaptation

Abstract

This paper discusses Don Quixote’s presence in film, but in terms of the myth rather than the book, an approach which goes beyond adaptation and opens up the field of study in a significant way. In so doing it proposes a tentative but coherent description of the quixotic myth or narrative pattern as that of the inadequate and romantic imitator/reader of fiction, which is the point of departure for the elaboration of an initial corpus of quixotic movies. The protagonists of these films are frustrated imitators of cinematographic models, female Quixotes who romanticize reality and heroes who are Quixotic because they are not fit for the heroic task they have undertaken. In order to illustrate this deep penetration of the myth into the cinematic medium, a recent example in Spanish cinema will be examined, The Heart of the Warrior (El corazón del guerrero, 2000), a film directed by Daniel Monzón, where these several varieties are at work in a combined and crystal clear way. Our survey will allow us to make a series of distinctions which organise and structure the different kinds of relationship between Don Quixote and film (Cervantean, quixotic and quixotish film) and, finally, to draw a series of theoretical conclusions which can be applied to the comparative study of film and literature.