Classics in Miniature – QUIXOTE. A Film by Steven Ritz-Barr

Abstract

Quixote is the second in the California-based Classics in Miniature series of short film versions of literary classics performed by puppets. The first film, Faust, was launched in 2008, and reviewed by Joachim Beug in Scenario 2008, Issue 2 (see http://publish.ucc.ie/scenario/2008/02/beug/09/en). The double challenge of condensing a work as vast as Cervantes’s Don Quijote – the text runs to about a thousand pages in most standard-format editions – into a film which lasts a half an hour and in which all the roles are performed by puppets is obviously very great, and all the more so when one considers that, according to the project website (www.classicsinminiature.com), this film, like the others in the series, is aimed at the “educational market (from age 12 through university) and to the general public”, and is “for everyone – young and old, cynical and romantic.” The implication that the creators of the series are conscious of the risks of over-simplification and sentimentalizing – risks which they might afford to incur if young children were, exclusively, their target audience – seems clear. Equally, it seems clear that they aim to communicate the essence of the original works not just to people who may never have ...