Notice: this is the first part of my lecture at Yale University the 26th september (Yale Film Studies Program). Other parts are: II‐ HISTORY OF THE PRODUCTION; III‐ DON QUIXOTE'S TEXTUAL RECONSTRUCTION: ENDOTEXT AND EXOTEXT; IV ‐ THE MEXICAN DON QUIXOTE; V‐ CONCLUSIONS Special Thanks to Dudley Andrew and Jonathan Rosenbaum. ORSON WELLES, AUTHOR OF DON QUIXOTE Adalberto Müller (UFF/CAPES-Brazil/Visiting Fellow at Yale Film Studies Program 2013) I - AUTHOR, ORIGINAL, TRANSLATION Among the categories Gérard Genette created to describe the different parts of a text and its transformations, he considers the cover of a book a "editorial paratext", in which some important issues are at stake. Taking for grant that a DVD cover can be analyzed as paratext, I propose to do it as the first evidence of my arguments in this lecture. I take hereby the most complete release in DVD, the French one, of the work we use to name as Orson Welles's Don Quixote. The film contained in it was produced in Spain and released in 1992, seven years after the death of the American actor and filmmaker. If we take a look at the French DVD cover of Don Quixote - which is not very different from the American one - we find no further information about the fact the film was re-edited by Jesus Franco with no relation to Orson Welles original ideas (as I will prove it further). The cover drives the consumer to believe he or she is buying an original work by Orson Welles. And not only a work, but a "chef- d'oeuvre perdu", a lost masterwork. This is the second lie here: Don Quixote was never lost: several prints of it exist, and the whole original negative is intact in Rome. Another problem here is the naming of actress Patty McCormack in the cast. Although she has played a role during the footage, her scenes are not present in the 114 minutes of the film contained in the DVD. The last mistake, intentional or not, is the cover photograph. This a is still of the first tests for Don Quixote Orson Welles did in 1955 in Bois de Boulogne, Paris, and the actor here is not Francisco Reiguera (whose name appear in the cover), but Mischa Auer, who was late (in 1957) substituted by Reiguera. All these evidences can assure me and you that we are facing a case of deceit.