Too Much Johnson

5 of 10 stars. This movie is worth watching as it is the 1st Film that Orson Welles ever Directed, and it is the only Silent Film he ever Directed; and it's the 1st Film that Joseph Cotten ever starred in, and the only Silent Film he ever starred in. And we know what they became, Welles, one of the most celebrated Director's in history; and Cotten having a great Acting career.

The film is mainly unedited, so I have scenes back to back, Cotten coming around the corner...then Cotten coming around the corner. So keep this in mind when you watch it, it's not a mistake or a bad copy you are watching...it's unedited. So keep that in mind.

It is filmed and Directed good, some of the shots and uses of shadows are extremely good, shots that aren't at a 90 degree or straight angle, all the stuff we now know about Welles that came later.

Cotten does a good job too, has a good physical presence that works in a Silent Film. It was only 3 years later that he starred alongside Orson Welles in the Welles Directed Masterpiece 'Citizen Kane'; and the year following Citizen Kane, Cotten starred in the Orson Welles Directed Masterpiece 'The Magnificent Ambersons'. It all happened so quick.

At the end of the day this is just an average film, and a film that Welles and Cotten never thought would go unedited; but it's a must see as it is a 1st for both, and an 'only' Silent for both.

A dirty pun. Because the lead clairette (arlene francis) is married. But has taken a lover, augustus billings (cotton). And the lover must try to escape before he is discovered by the returning husband (barrier) . And it's actually all silent, so this one is for the patient viewer. The first few scenes have dialog cards, but none after that. Omg, the chase scene with the keystone cops just goes on forever! The ladder bit on the roof looks like something from harold lloyd. Lots of running around rooftops, fire escapes, mountains. Editing is terrible.. as described in the trivia. People mouth words to the camera, but mostly no cards showing what they are saying. Lots of repetition, since little editing was ever done. Early early role for mary wickes. Directed by orson welles. Unfinished work from william gillette's play of 1894. Please read the trivia items in imdb to have a full understanding of the challenges of having this sixty six minute film ever presented, in any form. It really is a silent film.

A lot of the user reviews here are for the work print that was shown on TCM. That's about an hour. In 2014 people tried to edit the movie into something more functional which I found online and that's what I watched. And it's really fun.

It's a quirky movie. The early scenes involve an affair and it's Discovery and there's some surprisingly close close-ups and a lot of movements, like a background tree that flutters and shakes the entire time people are arguing. It's exactly what you would expect Orson Welles to do in his early experimental phase.

The biggest chunk of the film is a chase sequence mainly over the roofs of Manhattan. It is a wonderfully chaotic sequence in which a man grabs everyone's hats, and people barrel through a whole slew of empty crates that fall in huge towers. As the editors note Welles probably didn't plan for it to go on nearly this long but it's so entertaining that it is absolutely what they should have done.

One of the most surprising things of the film is how good Joseph Cotton, who always played dapper and rather sedate individuals, is at slapstick comedy. He really could have done that for a living.

The scene after on the boat is similarly chaotic with possibly more people than I've ever actually been on a boat.

The last bit of the film isn't actually very good but the chase sequence is enough to make this well worth watching.

It's a misnomer to call Orson Welles' 1941 "Citizen Kane" his first movie he had ever directed. "Kane" was his first feature film, but prior to handling what is now recognized as cinema's top classic the young Welles had already notched four short movies under his directorship. His third, 1938's "Too Much Johnson" was his most ambitious of the four. Although not fully completed and is a silent, Welles' movie introduced many of the camera angles and editing techniques the director would use throughout his career.

"Too Much Johnson" wasn't designed to stand alone. Welles, 23, was already a wunderkind on the Broadway stage as a director and on the radio as both an announcer and a writer. His forte was Shakespeare, but he also delved into contemporary as well as classical works. His repertory company called the Mercury Theatre, formed in 1936, consisted of a regular group of actors, including Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins, performing on the stage as well as in his dramatic radio presentations.

"I think he was the greatest directorial talent we've ever had in the American theater," described Mercury actor Norman Lloyd. "When you saw a Welles production, you saw the text had been affected, the staging was remarkable, the sets were unusual, music, sound, lighting, a totality of everything."

Welles always had a love for movies, and brought his imagination onto the screen first in a now lost 1933 'Twelfth Night' rehearsal sketch, then the following year in 'The Hearts of Age,' a school project with his wife Virginia Nicolson for the Todd School. In "Too Much Johnson," Welles designed his movie to be shown in three parts, interspersed with a stage production of the 1894 William Gillette comedy of the same name. The combination of a live show and a film harkened back to the vaudeville days when stage acts were interspersed with short silent films to make an evening's entertainment. Trouble was Welles' ambition to present the hybrid never came to fruition when he was planning to present it at the Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut. The theater failed to secure a projector for "Too Much Johnson," so the audience saw only the play. Welles' failure to pay Paramount Pictures, who held the rights to Gillette's play, also put a halt to Orson's idea.

If anything, creating "Too Much Johnson" was a good exercise in filmmaking for the young Welles. There are hints of the style of direction he would display three years later in "Citizen Kane." He places a number of shots with the camera aiming downward as well as several shots looking up on his subjects. His mix between close-ups and medium shots are also unusual. The movie took ten days to shoot, ripping through nearly 25,000 feet of film for the intended 40 minutes in length. "Orson had a wonderful time making the film," remembered future director John Berry, who was assisting Welles in the production. He recalled Welles editing the movie in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City when a fire broke out, "What I remember, most remarkably, is me running with the projector in my hand, burning, trying to get out of the door into the hallway while Orson, with absolutely no concern whatsoever, was back inside, standing and looking at some piece of film in his hand, smoking his pipe." After the failure to show "Too Much Johnson," Welles took what he had edited and other additional footage and placed it in storage. Welles later came across the movie thirty years later at his home in Spain. "I can't remember whether I had it all along and dug it out of the bottom of a trunk, or whether someone brought it to me, but there it was. I screened it, and it was in perfect condition, with not a scratch on it, as though it had only been through a projector once or twice before." A 1970 fire in his house destroyed that copy, and everyone thought the movie was lost until another copy was miraculously found in Italy.

Welles was very busy during this period of his life. In his series on CBS Radio, 'The Mercury Theatre on the Air' broadcasted classical works dramatized over the airwaves. One episode Welles' produced was a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds.' The broadcast simulated a fictional radio news report he and his cast gave on the October 30, 1938 show focused on the landing of Martian space ships. A number of listeners failed to hear the disclaimer at the beginning stating the broadcast was a dramatization of the Wells' novel on the Martian invasion of Earth, and became hysterical at the thought they were being attacked.

Welles' worldwide fame bubbled overnight from the broadcast. Several Hollywood studios, already familiar with his inventiveness on the New York City stage, proposed lucrative offers to get him to produce movies. The most generous was RKO Pictures, consisting of a two-picture contract of any subject of his choice. He could write the script, produce, direct and act in the movies, and he was given the right to edit the movies' final cut. Welles signed with RKO on July 22, 1939, launching one of Hollywood's most unusual directorial and acting careers.

Too Much Johnson (1938)

Orson Welles shot this film three years before CITIZEN KANE and it was never publicly shown. Welles had a print of the film but when he died he believed the only copy had burned in a fire but much later another print did turn up. Currently this film is available in a 66-minute workprint version as well as an edited 34-minute version, which apparently contains intertitles. It's worth pointing out that Welles himself never edited his "version" of the film.

Since I just viewed the workprint there's really no point in "reviewing" the film because what I viewed was pretty much every bit of footage that remains of the movie. When this was shown on Turner Classic Movies they decided to show this version because, I'm guessing, it contained the most footage and I'm sure most Welles fans wanted to see everything that was shot. The story itself is pretty simple as a man (Edgar Barrier) learns that the woman he loves is seeing another man (Joseph Cotten). Throughout the film Barrier chases Cotten around trying to catch him.

This was shot silent and was obviously a homage to the likes of Keystone and especially Harold Lloyd. Fans of the silent cinema will certainly want to watch this but those expecting to see something here that would predict the talent of Welles would eventually make something like CITIZEN KANE are going to be disappointed. Again, it's impossible to really judge a workprint but there are a few interesting things scattered throughout but I personally didn't see anything that would show early greatness from the director.

I thought the performances were quite good and especially Cotten who really does look like a silent film star. He manages to run around, climb buildings and fall over is a very believable and at times funny manor that really reminds you of some of the silent greats. The Lloyd influence is obvious. The film contains some good cinematography but without any intertitles it's really hard to follow the story. Perhaps the shorter, edited version takes care of this. As is, TOO MUCH JOHNSON is a film that Welles fans will want to watch but if you're unfamiliar with the genius then it would be best to start somewhere else first.