Campanas a medianoche

This volume illuminates a virtually unknown episode in film history: the unusual collaboration of Spanish playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo with Orson Welles on the Spanish dubbing of Welles's acclaimed film, Chimes at Midnight. Welles, known for his insistence on literary quality, specifically requested a translation that would resonate with the linguistic richness of Spain's Golden Age theater and Picaresca tradition for his Shakespearean masterpiece centered on Falstaff.

Buero Vallejo, who had previously achieved success with his Spanish adaptation of Hamlet, accepted the challenge. He crafted a meticulous version, titled Campanas a medianoche, using “incomplete hendecasyllables” to capture the rhythm and poetic height of Shakespeare's verse. Paradoxically, the very quality and historical resonance of Buero's text led producers to deem it “too cultured” and not commercial enough for a mass audience, ultimately leading to a more vulgar translation for the general public and Buero's demand to remove his name from the credits.

Edited by Luis Deltell and Jordi Massó, this Stockcero edition recovers Buero Vallejo's long-lost script, allowing Spanish-speaking audiences to experience Welles's cinematic vision with the literary gravitas he intended. It offers a unique insight into the intricate process of film adaptation, literary translation, and the complex relationship between art, commerce, and national identity in mid-20th-century Spain.

Campanas a medianoche is an indispensable resource for advanced courses in Spanish Theater, Film Studies, Translation Studies, Golden Age Literature, and Shakespeare in Adaptation. It explores the enduring legacy of classical Spanish drama through an extraordinary lens.