Campanas a medianoche
the «lost script» by Antonio Buero Vallejo

Campanas a medianoche preserves the extraordinary original screenplay of Orson Welles’s cinematic masterpiece—a brilliant cinematic condensation and reimagining of Shakespeare’s Henriad cycle (Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor). Centered on the tragic, symbiotic relationship between Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff, the film explores universal themes of honor, betrayal, political pragmatism, and the melancholy passing of an era. This volume recovers the lost Spanish text commissioned for the film's production to qualify for Spanish state subsidies. Because Welles demanded absolute linguistic purity, legendary playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo was hired as a "translator-recreator of language," transposing Elizabethan idioms into rich, authentic Golden Age Spanish, only for producers to modify the register for modern audiences.

Stockcero's Edition: Luis Deltell and Jordi Massó Castilla provide a groundbreaking critical edition that rescues Buero Vallejo’s lost translation-recreation from decades of archival obscurity. Their comprehensive Preliminary Study reconstructs the fascinating genesis of the film's Spanish production, detailing the artistic clash between Welles’s purist vision, Buero Vallejo’s rigorous Golden Age philological mimesis, and commercial studio interference. Supported by exhaustive editorial notes and historical documents, this volume offers an unprecedented window into the intersection of literature, film history, and translation studies. Integrated into Stockcero’s academic ecosystem, the text features citation-safe digital reading at $9.99, a free pedagogical Teaching Kit, and our permanent "Never Backlisted" guarantee.

Campanas a medianoche serves as an extraordinary cross-disciplinary case study for university courses in comparative literature, film studies, translation theory, and Golden Age reception. It bridges early modern English drama, Spanish classical language, and mid-twentieth-century cinema. Within the "Mastering the Golden Age" bundle, this text acts as the ultimate transversal keystone, demonstrating how the aesthetic principles, linguistic registers, and philosophical concerns of the Spanish seventeenth century continue to resonate in modern visual culture.