Too Much Johnson

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.